{"id":244994,"date":"2020-02-15T02:55:22","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T07:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=244994"},"modified":"2020-02-15T20:16:16","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T01:16:16","slug":"trudeau-tells-u-s-lawmakers-hes-confident-usmca-bill-will-pass-commons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/02\/15\/trudeau-tells-u-s-lawmakers-hes-confident-usmca-bill-will-pass-commons\/","title":{"rendered":"Trudeau tells U.S. lawmakers he’s confident USMCA bill will pass Commons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The USMCA implementation bill currently before the House of Commons, introduced last month by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, is expected to pass. (Shutterstock photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MUNICH \u2014 The federal Liberal government will \u201chave the votes\u201d to ensure North America’s new trade deal becomes the law of the land, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday before championing Canada’s fight against mounting protectionism and the erosion of rules-based global institutions.<\/p>\n

Trudeau, in Germany for the Munich Security Conference, assured U.S. lawmakers that the House of Commons will vote on the newly negotiated U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement \u201cin the coming weeks.\u201d Once approved, the signatories have three months to negotiate the regulations governing the deal before it goes into effect, likely this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood outcome, you think?\u201d asked Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate committee on foreign relations and a close confidant of Donald Trump who led a bipartisan delegation to the conference comprising members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cExcellent outcome,\u201d Trudeau replied. \u201cWe’re very confident we have the votes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hours later, though he didn’t mention the U.S. or its president by name, Trudeau tacitly acknowledged the seismic effect of Trump’s elbows-up approach to trade and foreign policy \u2014 a scorched-earth, America-First style he suggested has helped to undermine the rules-based\u00a0international\u00a0order.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a world in which more leaders are challenging long-standing principles of\u00a0international\u00a0relations. Protectionism is on the rise, trade is being weaponized, the benefits of democratic governance are being questioned,\u201d Trudeau told an audience of world leaders.<\/p>\n

Canada’s ongoing efforts to enshrine principles like environmental protection, labour standards and Indigenous rights in its trade agreements have helped to ensure that globalization doesn’t continue to alienate people around the world who feel left behind by the march of progress, he said.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Trudeau added, the country might not have been able to successfully negotiate deals like the USMCA, the Canada-EU trade agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership \u2014 making it the only G7 nation with a free-trade agreement with every other G7 partner \u2014 had it not been for its willingness to defend such principles.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad we chosen to ignore the very real concerns of people across the political spectrum on free trade and globalization, we might not have preferential access to two-thirds of the global economy today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trudeau also sang the praises of a Canadian-led effort to spearhead badly needed reforms at the World Trade Organization, one of the rules-based pillars that has been under sustained attack from the Trump administration, which deems it arbitrary and unfair. Since long before Trump, the U.S. has been blocking the appointment of U.S. judges to the WTO’s appellate body, making it impossible to adjudicate disagreements.<\/p>\n

A contingent of WTO members known as the Ottawa Group is focused on finding ways to resurrect the organization’s dispute-settlement process and keep disagreements from escalating, fix the negotiating and rule-making functions and modernize how its committees operate.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada,\u201d Trudeau said, \u201cwill continue to step up at a time when others may be stepping away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The USMCA implementation bill currently before the House of Commons, introduced last month by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, is expected to pass. That is in spite of the Liberal government’s minority status and a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the New Democrats, who have asked for a thorough review of the agreement, and the outright opposition of the Bloc Quebecois.<\/p>\n

The Opposition Conservatives, while loathe to give political succour to Trudeau’s Liberals, are expected to grudgingly support the deal in the name of Canada’s economic interests \u2014 a position some of their provincial political allies endorsed wholeheartedly last week during a goodwill mission in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the time to play politics,\u201d implored Ontario Premier Doug Ford. \u201cLet’s get this deal signed.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, Trudeau assured members of Congress not especially familiar with Canada’s political dynamics that ratification was only a matter of time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur parliamentary system is a little … I won’t say a little more complex than you guys,\u201d Trudeau joked with Graham at the start of the meeting. \u201cIt works fine, we just normally start after you guys finish your processes.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MUNICH \u2014 The federal Liberal government will \u201chave the votes\u201d to ensure North America’s new trade deal becomes the law …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":146602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,54365,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-instagram","category-news","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244994"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244997,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244994\/revisions\/244997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}