Op-Eds

There’s good reason to celebrate the late Brian Mulroney’s courage in embarking on the quest for a free-trade agreement with the Americans in his first term as prime minister. While eliciting strong opposition in many quarters at the time, it was a historically bold move, and the Mulroney government’s milestone achievement in getting Washington to sign the 1987 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, or FTA, has to be viewed in that light.

Equally significant was FTA’s successor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, bringing in Mexico as a partner in 1994. While NAFTA came into force under prime minister Jean Chrétien, it was negotiated and concluded under Mr. Mulroney, and stands as another fine achievement of his time in office.…

The World Trade Organization, the multilateral body that oversees the global trading system, is not top of mind for the business community. But it should be. The WTO’s current diminished state affects international commerce generally. Without universally respected rules, uncertainty prevails, and uncertainty raises businesses’ costs. Without the multilateral disciplines the WTO provides, a quilt of different agreements will impose a bewildering set of differing commercial requirements in different nations.

The collapse of the Doha Round negotiations in 2011 was a dire setback for the WTO. Since then it has been unable to play a meaningful role in meeting today’s challenging trade issues, including carbon-free goods, the…

Canada is a trading nation. Trade keeps the economy working, vital to the well-being of every Canadian. Securing and maintaining the country’s trade is thus one of the topmost responsibilities of the federal government, requiring skill, determination and a strategic focus on the national interest.

That means ensuring, among other things, that Canada’s weak performance in defence and security doesn’t spill over and harm the country’s key trading relationships, particularly when it comes to dealing with the United States, our biggest economic partner. The danger is that this spillover could well happen.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump caused a stir recently with his threat to NATO allies for not spending enough…

Standing back and looking at today’s global trading picture, one can see that it’s not pretty – destabilized by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, by the unsettled multilateral situation at the World Trade Organization and by innumerable regional trade disputes.

Most important among the issues, though, is the looming clash between the West and China over electric vehicles (EVs), which is set to dominate this year’s trade agenda.

This fight is shaping up to be an epic battle, covering a wide swath of minerals critical to EV production and with implications reaching deep into national decarbonization policies and supply chains, not only for the Canadian automotive industry but for a large array of businesses…

Bill C-282 is a terrible piece of legislation. Yet it sailed through the House of Commons and is now in the Senate, the last hope for bringing some sanity to the matter.

Indications are that key senators, including Senator Peter Boehm, chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee, have serious problems with the Bill.

The Bill amends the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act to insert a provision that prohibits the government from concluding any trade agreement that would increase foreign access to Canada’s supply managed agriculture sector.

This is an unprecedented effort that further protects the dairy, poultry and egg producers from foreign import competition. But…