Canada to start ratifying new NAFTA next week: Trudeau
Canada will move swiftly next week to formally approve North America’s new, long-delayed free trade pact, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday.
The government will introduce a motion to apply some of its elements Jan. 27 when Parliament resumes, and will table legislation to ratify the deal two days later, he said.
“Passing the new NAFTA in Parliament is our priority,” Trudeau said at the end of a cabinet retreat in Winnipeg. “Millions of Canadians depend on stable, reliable trade with our largest trading partners, from farmers in Alberta and autoworkers in Windsor, to aluminum producers in Saguenay and entrepreneurs in St John’s or in Vancouver.”
It is expected that the opposition Conservatives, who are ardent supporters of free trade, will support the legislation when Canada’s new minority Parliament reconvenes.
That would remove the final legal hurdle in preserving continent-wide trade after U.S. President Donald Trump foisted the acrimonious renegotiation of the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement on Canada and Mexico in 2017.
Bloc Quebecois leader Yvesfrançois Blanchet told reporters today following a caucus meeting that his party wants to make sure there is a robust debate in Parliament about the deal’s treatment of Quebec’s aluminum industry.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today he wanted to move quickly to approve the updated North American free-trade deal and added that he planned to table legislation to ratify it next week.
But Blanchet says the final agreement reached in December does not provide the same protections for Quebec’s aluminum industry as it does for the steel industry and Ontario’s auto-manufacturing sector. Blanchet says his party will not agree to fast-track the deal and instead wants it to be studied in committee and debated at length in the House of Commons
Mexico’s top trade negotiator, Jesus Seade, welcomed Trudeau’s announcement. “We celebrate the decision ... to hasten the process of ratification of the #USMCA ...,” Seade said on Twitter.