Canada & CUSMA - Toward Sovereign and Resilience Digital Ecosystems
By Renee Black
Trade agreements have been critical to Canada’s economic prosperity, but increasingly introduce significant risks.
Trade has grown significantly since the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 which reduced trade barriers, taxes and tariffs on imported and exported goods.
In 2018, however, Trump tore up existing trade agreements - which have been unevenly observed - and introduced new coercive terms on trade partners including Canada.
While trade negotiations have always disproportionately conferred more power to US companies, the asymmetrical dominance of US tech companies - coupled with increasingly collusive relationships with Trump - introduce new and growing threats to Canada.
Trump is now signaling interest in non-tariff barriers such as “digital services taxes and restrictions, abuses of antitrust and antimonopoly laws, discriminatory government procurement practices, non-market industrial policies, subsidized state-owned enterprises, and climate restrictions.”
Trade deals are largely negotiated outside the public domain, bypassing scrutiny from critical public voices.
Bypassing public scrutiny introduces significant concerns since such processes can reveal critical risks and unintended consequences that may have far reaching consequences for people, organizations and sovereignty.
Agreements can - for example - limit Canada's ability to create or enforce domestic policies or can require Canada to enact policies that adhere to the agreement terms, whether they are in Canada’s interests or not.
While negotiating trade agreements is a core government function, leaders should recognize that bypassing oversight processes is - by its very nature - undemocratic. Accordingly, governments should take excessive care to ensure that Canada is not unintentionally eroding its sovereignty through trade agreements in ways that it may not perceive.
GoodBot commends Global Affairs for providing commentators with an opportunity to offer feedback on the context and process of CUSMA negotiations. Yet consultations do not provide an opportunity to weigh in on the substance of negotiations which is where true risks lie.
Indeed, it would represent a significant and welcome departure if Canadians were provided with an opportunity to offer feedback on the substance of negotiations before terms are finalized to ensure that all critical risks are understood.
When the time comes, Canada must prevent trade deals from undermining policy and economic sovereignty.
GoodBot’s full submission can be found here.
