Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River.
I would like to thank my hon. friend from Windsor for all his work on Bill C-221. It is an excellent proposal and I look forward to voting on it on Wednesday.
Today, I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk about the organization that made the agreement on trade facilitation, known as the TFA, happen: the World Trade Organization.
The TFA is the first multilateral agreement concluded since the creation of the WTO over 20 years ago and is a notable success for both the organization and the multilateral trading system.
As an export-driven economy, one in five Canadian jobs depends upon exports and over 40,000 Canadians companies abroad. The WTO has played an important role in helping to liberalize trade, and trade liberalization remains vital to Canada's future.
For these reasons, Canada has been a key player in the development of robust international trade rules since the 1947 beginnings of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which later became the WTO.
The WTO remains a cornerstone of Canada's trade and investment policy and serves as a backstop against protectionism. The continued enhancement of global trade rules benefits Canada and the international community as a whole.
The WTO provides an important and effective forum for settling trade disputes, which has dealt with 500 cases in just over 20 years.
Today, 98% of global trade takes place under the WTO rule book, and the WTO's 164 members actively monitor each other's trade measures against those rules in order to improve transparency and avoid protectionism.
It is a system that continues to deliver results, as evidenced by decisions in Canada's challenge of the U.S. COOL rules; that is, country of original labelling.
The WTO delivers results in other areas too, such as the Nairobi package announced at the 10th WTO ministerial meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, late last year, which included discussions on issues important to developing and least-developed countries, including the elimination of trade-distorting export subsidies and conclusion on the expanded Information Technology Agreement, the ITA.
Once implemented, the ITA will eliminate tariffs on certain information technology products that represent around 10% of global trade, which is about $1.3 trillion annually.
The Minister of International Trade participated in the 2015 ministerial conference, where she talked about the importance of inclusive growth and shared prosperity for both developed and developing countries. We want trade and opening up of markets to help raise standards of living, empower women, and protect the environment.
The WTO better helps to integrate developing countries into a global trading system and ensures that they derive real, tangible benefits from it. The WTO also provides the technical assistance required to help improve their trading capacities.
The TFA, a multilateral undertaking, was successful in large part due to the flexibility it allows in the way new commitments are taken on, which has proven to be a crucial ingredient for the WTO's recent successes. It allows developing WTO members to implement commitments in ways commensurate with their capacity.
Under the TFA, developing members are able to divide commitments into those they can implement immediately, those for which they will require extra time, and those requiring both additional time and technical assistance. Developed economies are to facilitate the provisions of technical assistance.
Canada is well positioned to assist developing WTO members in implementing the TFA's provisions and has been refocusing development programming to promote trade facilitation reforms.
Key examples of our efforts include contributions to the World Bank's trade facilitation support program and the new Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation.
The World Bank's trade facilitation support program is a multi-donor program that helps developing countries implement trade facilitation reforms in a manner consistent with the World Trade Organization's TFA. Canada donated $2 million to this worthwhile initiative.
The Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation, launched in December 2015, is an innovative public-private platform to ensure effective trade facilitation reforms in developing countries measured by real-world business metrics.
The key innovation of the alliance is to leverage private expertise to identify, validate, and support practical reforms that simplify customs procedures, reduce border wait times, and reduce trade costs—to which Canada contributed $10 million, as a founding donor.
The TFA has attracted widespread support from Canadian and international stakeholders, including the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, and a large number of agriculture and agri-food business associations.
The TFA will only enter into force once two-thirds of WTO members have ratified the agreement. Some 92 members have already ratified the TFA. This includes our major trading partners—the United States, the European Union, China, and Japan—and Canada is expected to follow suit expeditiously. An additional 18 ratifications are required for the TFA to enter into force.
The statutory amendments contained in Bill C-13 are required to allow Canada to ratify this agreement. These amendments are designed to protect the health and safety of Canadian consumers and workers, as well as the environment, in the event that goods in transit are diverted into the Canadian market, and to clarify practices related to the treatment of rejected goods.
Canada is committed to making the world more prosperous and helping the poorest and most vulnerable reap the poverty-reduction benefits of economic growth. Canada can do its part by ratifying the TFA as quickly as possible.
I urge all hon. members to support the legislative amendments contained in Bill C-13 that will enable Canada to do our part to bring this agreement into force.
