Pacific deal still has a long road ahead
Canada and 11 other Pacific Rim countries are trumpeting the Trans- Pacific Partnership trade agreement as a historic deal, but a long and winding road of translation, legal reviews and ratifications awaits before it will ever take effect.
And the timetable is mostly up to other countries — particularly the United States.
If the Canada- European Union free- trade agreement, which is behind schedule, is any indication, the Trans- Pacific Partnership deal could take longer to ratify than the two years Conservative Leader Stephen Harper suggested Monday when announcing it.
The trade deal will give Canada preferential access to major and emerging trade markets that is expected to increase exports such as beef, pork, canola, wines and spirits, and be a boost to Canada’s services sector.
On the flip side, worries persist that the deal could kill thousands of jobs in Canada’s auto sector, threaten the livelihoods of dairy farmers and produce more expensive pharmaceutical drugs across the country.
But it will be years before the agreement becomes law and either the benefits or consequences of the deal are realized.
“We are releasing chapter details, full text we expect in the next few days. We would expect, all things being equal, signature probably early in the new year and ratification in the next two years,” Harper said Monday.
The Conservative government announced a new process in 2008 for approving international treaties — such as trade agreements — in Parliament that requires the treaty to be tabled in the House of Commons and an enacting bill to be passed before the government can ratify a deal.
It calls for trade deals to be tabled for 21 sitting days in Parliament before implementing legislation can be introduced. Once that legislation is tabled, it must be debated and passed in both the House of Commons and Senate.
Once it has passed through both Houses of Parliament, it can then be ratified by a cabinet order that requires a ministerial signature ( in what’s called an order in council).
The executive — the prime minister and cabinet — has full authority to ratify trade deals, but the agreement can only be incorporated into domestic Canadian law through actual enacting legislation.
With that in mind, it could be a couple of years or more before the TPP agreement comes into force.
The document, once the full text is finalized, needs to be translated into all official languages of the participating countries and go through an exhaustive legal review, a process known as a “legal scrub.”
The outcome of the federal election could also influence whether Canada is part of the deal, with NDP Leader Tom Mulcair saying a New Democrat government would not implement the TPP if it wins the Oct. 19 election.
The 12- country TPP includes Canada, the United States, Japan, Mexico, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
Mark Warner, an international trade lawyer in Canada and the U. S. with the firm MAAW Law, said the length of time to release the full text and launch the translation and legal scrub will very much depend on the Obama administration’s timetable.
He believes “it’s unlikely” the text of the agreement will be unveiled before the Oct. 19 election — as the Canadian government has indicated it will, and NDP is calling for — because the U. S. may not be prepared to release it before then if the Obama administration is trying to finalize language on some contentious parts.
“The Canadian timetable is entirely reactive in my view,” Warner said. “Canada takes its cues from the U. S. on this.”
As well, potential changeovers in governments in some TPP countries over the next year or so, notably in the U. S. and Japan, could also influence the timetable for approval and coming into force. He believes if all goes well and the U. S. Congress approves the agreement by next spring before the presidential election, the deal could actually come into force by early 2017.
But if the TPP approval process is bogged down in Congress or hits a snag in some other countries, then suddenly “this could look a lot more like the Europe ( deal),” Warner said.