![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldDoug Saunders' article surprised me.
When I first heard of talk of Canada-European Union free trade earlier this year, it was in the context of a fairly interesting set of discussions between the governments of France and Québec on establishing--among other things--the mutual recognition of educational and job credentials between France and Québec. At the time, the issue of free trade seemed ancillary to what looked like the development of a Québec foreign policy. It looks that Paul Wells was correct to suggest in MacLean's that the Canadian federal and Québec provincial governments were coordinating efforts so as to bring this off.
If the agreement is as discussed, then not only will the Canadian-European Union relationship be more intense than Morocco's own relationship with the European Union, it will even be stronger than Turkey's own long-standing if problematic relationship.
Is this what associate membership in the European Union looks like? If so, heh.
Canadian and European officials say they plan to begin negotiating a massive agreement to integrate Canada's economy with the 27 nations of the European Union, with preliminary talks to be launched at an Oct. 17 summit in Montreal three days after the federal election.
Trade Minister Michael Fortier and his staff have been engaged for the past two months with EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and the representatives of European governments in an effort to begin what a senior EU official involved in the talks described in an interview yesterday as "deep economic integration negotiations."
If successful, Canada would be the first developed nation to have open trade relations with the EU, which has completely open borders between its members but imposes steep trade and investment barriers on outsiders.
The proposed pact would far exceed the scope of older agreements such as NAFTA by encompassing not only unrestricted trade in goods, services and investment and the removal of tariffs, but also the free movement of skilled people and an open market in government services and procurement--which would require that Canadian governments allow European companies to bid as equals on government contracts for both goods and services and end the favouring of local or national providers of public-sector services.
[. . .]
[W]ith the breakdown of World Trade Organization talks in July, European officials have become much more interested in opening a bilateral trade and economic integration deal with North America.
A pact with the United States would be politically impossible in Europe, senior European Commission officials said.
A newly completed study of the proposed deal, which European officials said Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided not to release until after the election, concludes that the pact would increase bilateral trade and investment by at least $40-billion a year, mainly in trade in services.
Ottawa officials say they have overcome what they see as their biggest hurdle: the resistance of provincial governments to an agreement that would force them to allow European corporations to provide their government services, if their bids are the lowest.
When I first heard of talk of Canada-European Union free trade earlier this year, it was in the context of a fairly interesting set of discussions between the governments of France and Québec on establishing--among other things--the mutual recognition of educational and job credentials between France and Québec. At the time, the issue of free trade seemed ancillary to what looked like the development of a Québec foreign policy. It looks that Paul Wells was correct to suggest in MacLean's that the Canadian federal and Québec provincial governments were coordinating efforts so as to bring this off.
If the agreement is as discussed, then not only will the Canadian-European Union relationship be more intense than Morocco's own relationship with the European Union, it will even be stronger than Turkey's own long-standing if problematic relationship.
Is this what associate membership in the European Union looks like? If so, heh.
