Canada’s timely pact with Europe
When it starts taking effect next month, the Canada-European Union trade accord will be more than just another international economic pact.
It will be a cry for transatlantic unity, a defiant stand against the sinister populist and isolationist winds buffeting the world today.
The EU’s trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, underlined the accord’s importance in Ottawa last week when she commended the Canadian government for favouring open borders instead of closed ones and working with, not against, other nations.
This is a timely message and Malmstrom had no trouble identifying the dangerous forces she sees threatening the global order.
She cited the election of U.S. President Donald Trump who wants to “Make America Great Again” by renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, building a wall along the Mexican border, taxing imports and getting tough with migrants.
She cited last year’s Brexit vote that will take the United Kingdom out of the EU.
And she cited the upcoming French presidential elections in which one of the leading candidates, Marine Le Pen, boasts an anti-trade, anti-immigrant, antiglobalization platform as well as plans to pull France out of the EU.
If France leaves, the union of nations that has delivered peace and prosperity to Europe for 60 years could be destroyed. Such an outcome would delight and embolden Vladimir Putin, Russia’s paranoid but expansionist president.
We doubt many Canadians see their country’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the EU as such a noble, humanitarian venture.
Too many Canadians remain hostile to trade deals, even though most of the economic evidence shows the ones Ottawa has signed over the years benefitted the country.
Malmstrom challenged the naysayers to trade deals and globalization.
“Events such as Brexit, such as the election of Trump, which makes uncertainty in the world, (are) also in a way bringing us a little bit more together and forcing us to sharpen our thoughts (on) what we have and what we might lose,” Malmstrom said. “You don’t know what you have until you risk losing it.”
Quite so. The economic advantages of the Canada-EU trade accord are clear.
It will eliminate duties on tens of thousands of products that include more than 95 per cent of what Canada sells to Europe. It will knock down many nontariff obstacles to commerce.
It will provide greater access to the EU market for Canada’s auto sector as well as its beef and pork farmers.
Meanwhile, with all the uncertainty hanging over the future of Canada’s trade partnership with America — which buys 75 per cent of our exports — the prospect of increasing Canadian trade with Europe is welcome.
The fact that the negotiations for the Canada-EU trade pact were started by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and completed by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals demonstrates its broad political support in Canada.
But as Malmstrom insists, this accord is also saying something vital to the international community: The populist tide can be turned back. And despite all the forces trying to pull the world apart, Canada and the European Union are doing their best to hold it together.