Four countries chose not to join the European Union. You mentioned them: Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Canada negotiated a trade agreement with them a number of years ago. We are actually having discussions about modernizing that agreement to make it more comprehensive, like the CETA agreement will be.
That said, both EFTA, which is the organization of four countries you spoke to, as well as this agreement with the EU.... The EU is a group of countries that do share our common values, which is why we believe we've been able to secure such a comprehensive outcome here. Both sides knew that there were tremendous opportunities to remove trade barriers and really drive economic growth.
For Canada it's an issue of almost immediate access to a market of 500 million consumers. This is a market that is extremely wealthy, comparatively speaking. It is a market that thousands upon thousands of Canadian businesses have been unable to penetrate because of high tariff barriers and because of all these non-tariff barriers that Mr. McKay referenced. We've worked very hard to secure an agreement that actually measurably removes these barriers to trade and provides new opportunities for Canadians.
As I said in my opening remarks, we expect there to be tremendous additional economic activity generated by this agreement. We expect there to be an additional $12 billion of GDP added to our economy, the equivalent of about 80,000 new Canadian jobs, the equivalent of $1,000 for the average Canadian family.
Now, that doesn't mean every Canadian family will receive $1,000; it means that on average that would be the impact of this agreement.
That's something we should be celebrating.