Yes, exactly.
There are three papers: one on Canada-Japan; one on the TPP; and one on the study I did with George Stalk of the Boston Consulting Group on the “North American Gateway”, which is an outcome of the flow of goods and services from Asia and Europe into all of North America, using Canadian infrastructure. It's would be enormous job creator if we got our act together, but I'll leave that for the moment.
I'll make a couple of comments quickly and then turn it over to my old friend Michael, who I worked with several years ago on the U.S.-Canada free trade agreement.
The TPP, as most of you know, because several of you were at our big conference in Tokyo on the Canada-Japan agreement, which has overlapped the TPP discussions and a recent conference in Toronto with the chamber of commerce, talking about the TPP and the Canada-Japan EPA..... As you know, in Asia there are at least four related sets of agreements, and it's hard to disentangle them. You have the TPP, but only recently with Japan as a partner, and I regret that Canada was the last country among the partners that endorsed Japan to become part of the TPP.
One geopolitical issue on the TPP is that it's a U.S. strategy to contain China. If that is the case, it's going to fail, because in Asia there are other agreements. When the Japanese prime minister announced their entry into the TPP—and the partners have to agree for each new member, which happened to Canada as well—he also singled out the China-South Korea-Japan free trade agreement. In the last 10 years, there has been—to use a phrase used in Asia—a plethora of agreements. There are several bilateral deals, such as India-Japan, for instance, and Korea-Japan, and that has a bearing on the TPP, which I'll come back to. Then, of course, for us in Canada, which I think is a central issue, there is the Canada-Japan EPA.
So we have to put these in context. All of these agreements, with overtones of the previous discussion, are political agreements, and you have to get agreement. With anything involving the United States, as we know with free trade, they have a fast-track procedure: it's all or none. You can't just pick and choose as you see fit, which I think is going to be the central issue for the TPP.
The TPP now has 12 partners. It would be phenomenal if it were successful, but Japan has just joined and, for political reasons, Abe has to face the upper house elections in July. It will be a real problem if he loses those elections, but I don't think he is going to. But as you know, anything in Japan involving trade is rice farmers, with roughly a 780% tariff, and these rice farmers have enormous political clout in the Japanese system. I just mention that.
That leads us to Canada-Japan, wherein we're now facing the third round of negotiations. The last one was in April in Ottawa. The next one is in July in Tokyo and another round is scheduled for the fall, probably in Canada. It may not be in Ottawa.
I'll end my remarks with this: if we can get the European deal and the TPP deal, it will be enormously advantageous for Canada, but unfortunately time is against us.
I was out for dinner in Tokyo and my wife was watching a replay of President Obama's address to Congress. He was talking about the EU-U.S. agreement. The worst case for Canada, in my view, is to have a Japanese-U.S. free trade agreement and a U.S.-European free trade agreement without Canada having an agreement with either. It would put Canada in a situation of being almost like a spoke in the hub of the United States.
If we can get the European deal possibly in the next month, and the Japanese deal perhaps at the end of this year, we will be in a very good position regarding the European deal with the United States, and the TPP. These deals are not only political in nature, but timing is extremely important. We can't wait. If we wait—because we can't get an agreement—we will be in a very defensive position.
Let me leave it at that and turn it over to Michael, and then I'll be happy to answer questions, en français, en anglais.