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If we can move ahead in areas that trade agreements don’t usually deal with
—such as labour movement—we would, I think, be setting a good example.
We’d be dealing with an area that isn’t covered by the WTO
and isn’t covered by many regional trade agreements.
What we have to remember too, of course, is what we grant to Europeans
and what we get from the Europeans should also in the end
—and probably will also in the end—be shared with the Americans.
And I think that’s a positive sign too.
We should in the long run be working for a North American-EU transatlantic free trade area.
I don’t imagine that the United States will remain silent if we open our provincial services
markets to European services. The Americans will surely want to take another look
at the fact that NAFTA does not do this. And I would think that we would
very quickly be involved in negotiations with the Americans to do just that.
Yes, any significant degree of liberalization in a Canada-EU agreement
should ideally rub off on our other trade relations.
In some cases we may find ourselves legally committed to doing this.
But in any case, a major agreement, such as for instance
the EU-USA air services agreement, made it inevitable that Canada
would proceed with negotiations with the EU. And it could well be that
if we come up with a really comprehensive Canada-EU trade and investment agreement,
that the Americans will take a second look and say,
“Well, why don’t we have one like that?”
In which case we would really be moving pretty quickly towards
some kind of common transatlantic free trade, if not common market.