Nations agree to keep lid on NAFTA talks

Participants sign confidentiality agreement

WASHINGTON • Canada, the United States, and Mexico have signed a confidentiality agreement designed to prevent leaks during the NAFTA negotiations, with a list of rules to protect details of the offers they submit to each other.

The deal bars the governments from distributing texts, emails, proposals and presentations gathered from the other parties, with a series of guidelines about how the materials should be handled. There are two exceptions. Governments can share the information internally, with government officials; and also externally, with the stakeholders they consult on the negotiations.

Otherwise, the materials are to be stamped, “Confidential,” and, when not being used, are to be protected in secure locations like locked file cabinets.

The agreement expires four years after negotiations conclude.

Countries are allowed to share their own documents with whomever they like; the agreement simply forbids them from leaking other countries’ materials.

One trade veteran says this agreement seems reasonable.

Peter Clark says it appears to leave room for consultation with the industry and labour groups involved in the process — which he says would be a welcome development.

“These rules should permit prompt and effective stakeholder consultations,” said the Ottawa trade consultant.

Meanwhile, Aboriginal trade experts and leaders say the creation of an Indigenous chapter in a renegotiated NAFTA could be a way to address enduring concerns about mobility of tribes across the Canada-U.S. border.

Passage rights have been an issue since long before the creation of the border, says Wayne Garnons-Williams — a Plains Cree Indian and founding president of the International Intertribal Trade Organization that is made up of Indigenous and non-Indigenous trade experts.

His group, which made a formal submission to Global Affairs Canada, is calling for NAFTA to be revised to include provisions consistent with the historic Jay Treaty, inked in 1794 between Great Britain and the U.S.

“It is recognizing the fact these people still exist on both sides of the border and that there still has to be accommodation to allow for free passage,” he said in an interview.

“I think this Aboriginal chapter provides an opportunity to address this longstanding problem.”

The Jay Treaty is also expected to be the subject of a report from the Indigenous Affairs Department later this month that could advise Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on how the issue could be included in NAFTA talks.