The acting Executive Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance expects the less contentious issues under the North American Free Trade Agreement to be dealt with first before negotiators move on to the more contentious issues.
Round three of discussions aimed at modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement is scheduled to take place in October in Ottawa.
Martin Rice, the acting Executive Director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, suggests issues of common interest will move forward first.
I think most of the discussion in terms of substantive content that can be built into the updated agreements would seem to be areas of common understanding, common interest. Regulatory coherence, regulatory cooperation is something that all three countries are interested in. Still lots of details to work out in terms of exactly what form that takes but that certainly is, I think, something that is making some progress.
The areas of sensitivity, which are the ones everybody is kind of waiting to hear what happens, they are going to be dealt with later in the round. But there isn’t really even very much clarification yet on what are the specific expectations, hopes from the parties, particularly the U.S. They’re still building up there team. Some important spots remain to be filled here. I think we’re seeing the negotiations are going to deal with the easy stuff first and the harder stuff, as is typical, will be later.
~ Martin Rice, Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance
Rice anticipates key issues will include the dispute settlement process, particularly the one that deals with countervail dumping, there are market access interests on the U.S. side on our supply managed sector and we’re hearing more about rules of origin, which will demonstrate which products qualify for the benefits of NAFTA and on mobility of professionals who are working for companies with divisions in other countries.
