Canada won’t rush into Pacific pact: Trudeau
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insists he will not be pressed into signing an updated Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty too hastily, even if some of Canada’s partners are keen to secure a quick agreement.
Trudeau made the remarks Wednesday when asked whether he would walk away from the 11country trade pact if the revised deal failed to include several new “progressive” chapters Canada has been pushing for.
“We believe that progressive, solid trade deals can help citizens in all sorts of different countries, at different levels of development and our ministers are very much focused on that,” Trudeau told reporters in Hanoi, where he started his multi-day trip through Southeast Asia.
“But let me, of course, remind everyone that Canada will not be rushed into a deal that is not in the best interests of Canada and of Canadians.”
Trudeau then added, in French: “I can assure people that we will not be rushed into signing a deal at all costs.”
The remaining TPP economies are trying to revive the deal following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw earlier this year.
The TPP is expected to be a central theme at this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang. Trudeau will attend the APEC meetings and there has been speculation that some kind of deal could be reached by the end of the summit.
International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne has said Canada wants the updated TPP to contain progressive chapters on the environment as well as workers’ and women’s rights.
But trade experts have predicted that persuading Asia-Pacific economies on progressive chapters will be a tough sell.
Some of the countries at the table are far less developed than Canada and would have difficulty implementing them, while others might prefer to leave social issues separate from trade agreements.
Trudeau is travelling in the AsiaPacific region over the next week to strengthen Canada’s ties to the region.
He arrived Wednesday in the buzzing, moped-filled city of Hanoi, the capital of a fast-growing country that has a deep cultural connection for many Canadians.
Trudeau met Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and civil society leaders, with whom he discussed issues like human rights, gender equality and freedom of expression.
On Thursday, he’s scheduled to travel to Ho Chi Minh City to visit the stock exchange, hold a roundtable with business leaders and appear at a university event.
He will head to Danang on Saturday for the two-day APEC leaders’ summit, before moving on to the Philippines to attend the annual meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
At both the APEC and ASEAN events, Canada is expected to press its trade agenda. It’s already engaged in exploratory trade talks with the ASEAN countries as well as negotiations to salvage the TPP.
When it comes to the TPP, much of the focus remains on Japan, the world’s third-largest economy.
Dominic Barton, the global managing partner of consulting giant McKinsey & Co., said in an interview that the rapid changes in Vietnam’s key cities remind him of what Shanghai went through less than two decades ago.
Barton, who also chairs the Trudeau government’s economic growth council, said Vietnam is an example of why Canada must be “motoring ahead” into Asia, particularly with so much uncertainty around the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“We’ve got to go hard on those Asian relationships,” said Barton, who led McKinsey operations in Asia and South Korea for nearly a decade.
“I think we just have to have irons in many fires.”