Earlier this week, I participated on a ‘consultation’ conference call arranged by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade on the Canada-European Union trade talks.
On the call was Canada’s chief negotiator for the Canada-EU talks Steve Verheul.
During the one-hour conference call, the chief negotiator said:
– “the first round of negotiations (the week of October 19 in Ottawa) exceeded expectations”
– “this agenda is broader and more ambitious than NAFTA”
– “it involves market access, good and services, procurement at all levels, investment, labour mobility, non-tariff barriers, regulatory hurdles”
– “it’s an ambitious timeline, the second round will be in January in Brussels, then rounds in April in Ottawa, in July in Brussels, and then one more”
– “there is a consolidated working draft text”
– “there will be offers and requests at the next round in Brussels”
– “we are breaking new ground”
– “there are no plans to release the draft text”
– “there are no plans for a parliamentary process either”
– “there has been no discussion and no draft text on water, but that may come up with the requests”
– “water is sensitive for us and we would approach that with caution”
– “no big push is expected at the G8/G20, there may be exchanges but no push”
– “there’s lots of detail work to do, we don’t need political involvement at this point”
– “we will see how far the provinces and territories are prepared to go”
– “if we have a successful negotiation and we can have access, then Canadians could produce hormone free meat for the European market”
– “the whole area of procurement is of keen interest to the EU”
– “they want to get at sub-national procurement”
– “the EU has expressed concern about Ontario’s Green Energy Act, they’re not happy with it”
– “we have no interest in forcing Ontario to change its legislation or requirements, but the EU will put pressure on them”
– “we will find out how far we can go”
– “we have talked about past approaches, they’ve taken different approaches, we have said we have an interest in broader provisions, as well as investor-state”
– “they are prepared to discuss this, and are not rejecting it, but we won’t get to this until the third or fourth round”
– “municipalities haven’t been directly involved in the talks on procurement, but provinces and territories are consulting with municipalities on their own”
– “municipalities fall under their jurisdiction”
– “the FCM has been following this, but not directly engaged”
– “when we get to the finer details they may be further involved”
– “I wouldn’t hazard a guess at the size of Canada’s procurement market, it would be a reasonably high figure”
– “we’ve seen no suggestion that this will be the precursor to an EU-NAFTA arrangement”
– “I can’t speak to EU intentions, but it positions them well for that if we can address differences in standards and regulations in this”
– “not on the horizon though”
– “no target date (for the signing of the deal), but hope to finish in two years”
– “we’ll have another call after the next round of talks”
For Council of Canadians analysis on the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, please go to http://canadians.org/trade/issues/EU/index.html.
You will find many resources there including our new fact sheet, ‘Open For Business: Privatization, not higher standards, the main goal of Canada-EU free trade talks’.
