Op-Eds
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…
As governments subsidize ever-expanding decarbonization measures, including Volkswagen’s St. Thomas, Ont., battery plant that got $13 billion from Canada, there are clouds gathering on the trade horizon.
Canada had matched what Volkswagen would have gotten under similar, American subsidies. Many of these national measures to aid the transition to net-zero emissions, even if based on the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris climate-change agreement, may run headlong against trade rules that prohibit both the subsidization of goods that enter international markets as well as local content requirements that discriminate against imports.
Governments have to find accommodation or the world could be in store for a…
China’s disruptive behaviour had de-stabilized the global trading order well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February. Such geopolitical trends, among others, have converged to produce tectonic shifts in international business as we go forward into 2023.
So, what does this mean for what still remains of the post-Second World War rules-based trading system?
For starters, the World Trade Organization, the body that oversees the multilateral system, is under considerable stress. In spite of exhortations at its ministerial meeting last June and a recent plea from its director-general, the WTO has floundered over the past few years.
The problems are deeply entrenched. The WTO is mired in internal governance…
At the four-month mark, the costs of Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” have both soared and spread. The war already has moved well up the ranks of the bloodiest modern wars on record, the direct economic costs have mounted steeply, and the spillover effects have gone global.
For Ukraine, the physical damage is now likely on the order of US$150 billion as city after city in the path of Putin’s army is shelled into rubble. Ukraine’s economy will contract by 45 per cent in 2022, based on recent World Bank estimates. This reflects the mass destruction or shutdown of businesses, the blockade of Ukraine’s main export routes through Black Sea ports and the dislocation of one-third of its households and workers. For the…
Alors qu’on placote autour du BBQ, une bière à la main, s’amène à l’horizon la tempête parfaite pour troubler notre insouciance : une crise alimentaire mondiale.
Les plus fortunés se scandaliseront du prix du bifteck d’aloyau ou du homard, mais pas assez pour s’en priver. Les autres devront se serrer la ceinture et un nombre grandissant iront le ventre vide.
Cette tempête parfaite est la fille des ouragans que nous connaissons bien : la pandémie, la guerre en Ukraine et le réchauffement climatique.
Il y a assez de nourriture pour tous, mais tous ne peuvent se la payer, surtout quand les prix grimpent en flèche.
Depuis le début de la COVID-19, les prix des céréales sont en hausse de 75 % et…
