Thank you for your question.
The Canada-Singapore free trade negotiations have been ongoing for nearly seven years now. They were only restarted early last year at the intervention of Minister Emerson. The principal stumbling block is the unwillingness on the part of the Singaporeans to give concessions to Canada that they gave to the United States.
Let me paint a bit of context here. We in fact started our negotiations with Singapore before the Americans. The Americans closed quite quickly--before us. When the Americans started talking to the Singaporeans, Singapore of course gave much more attention to negotiations with the U.S. than with us. After the closure of their agreement, we, in part because of our NAFTA relationship, understandably wanted similar concessions. The Singaporeans were unwilling to do that for reasons you can expect, and that has led to a deadlock in the negotiations.
This is a very problematic issue, not only in the case of Singapore but in any negotiation we might undertake where the Americans are having similar talks. There's an eerie and ominous parallel developing in the talks with Korea. We started talks with Korea before the Americans did. But in a very similar pattern, the Americans started negotiations and the Koreans seem to be putting much more attention on their negotiations with the Americans than on ours. This may lead to the similar complications we have seen in the Singapore arrangement.
To go back to the broader question, though, of what the Singapore impasse might mean for a broader agreement with ASEAN, I think there's no question that if we cannot close a deal with Singapore it will be very hard to start a deal with ASEAN as a whole.
Singapore, as you may know, is one of the freest economies in the world. There are virtually no tariff barriers. There are restrictions in the services sector. There are some problems around competition policy. There are issues around government procurement. But in terms of merchandise trade, there are virtually no restrictions.
If Canada cannot conclude a deal with essentially a free port, there will be questions around whether Canada can close a deal with countries that have much more substantial trade barriers. This is not to say that we shouldn't try to work towards an agreement with ASEAN as a whole, but we're sending a very negative signal in failing to conclude with Singapore after six or seven years of negotiations.