In late January, while all trade policy eyes were turned on the NAFTA talks, Canadian trade negotiators were closeted away in Japan with the other ten remaining Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries in order to salvage that agreement. President Donald Trump had pulled the U.S. out of the deeply unpopular TPP…
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U.S. President Trump claims to support a “fair” new framework for North American trade that puts American workers first. Understandably, this has sparked demands for a fairer distribution of the benefits of trade for workers in all three NAFTA countries. The Canadian government has apparently decided to call Trump’s bluff….
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Earlier this month, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) ruled that wines made in the occupied territories of the West Bank could not be labelled as products of Israel. After the ruling, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) directed its vendors to pull the products from their shelves. The…
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Donald Trump was still about two weeks away from winning the U.S. presidency when The Populist Explosion was released in October. The election would take many people by surprise, including the book’s author John Judis, sure as they all were that the more mainstream candidate could not lose. Since then…
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Image via the Toronto Star The Trump administration is not making it easy to predict what a NAFTA renegotiation will look like for Canada. On the one hand are demands from the U.S. president for a “fair” new framework for North American trade that puts American workers first. On the other…
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Late last week, federal, provincial and territorial governments jointly celebrated the conclusion of a new internal trade deal they’re calling the Canadian Free Trade Agreement. The CFTA replaces the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), which was completed in 1995 and updated a half-dozen times since to respond to business complaints…
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The federal government has approved the sale of one of B.C.’s largest seniors’ care home chains to a Beijing-based conglomerate with a “murky” ownership structure, to say the least. While the details of Investment Canada’s ruling are still under wraps, a spokesperson for Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains told…
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There was a point in 2016 when it seemed the Canada–European Union free trade deal – CETA – was not going to make it. Ironically, Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States has all but assured its approval in Europe. Resistance to CETA, which had been building quietly…
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On his first full day in office, Donald Trump made good on his pledge to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), effectively killing the deal. The administration then turned its sights on overhauling NAFTA, which may be more curse than blessing for Canada. Under NAFTA Article 2205, any party can…
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After spending all year consulting with Canadians on the pros and cons of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP), the Trudeau government is close to ratifying an equally controversial, equally intrusive deal with Europe: the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Like the TPP, CETA was negotiated almost entirely by the previous…
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