Mr. Chair and honourable members, thank you very much for inviting me.
I need not tell this committee that your work takes place at a moment of exceptional trade policy uncertainty and instability, and thus we welcome work towards a possible Canada-Mercosur free trade agreement.
As we've just heard, Mercosur comprises over 300 million people. Among the strategic objectives of the current Mercosur agreement is not only the enhancement of trade and economic co-operation, but also the support of democratic governance and rule of law. It's important for Canada to diversify our trade relations and deepen our engagement with hemispheric partners.
We also welcome Canada's support of a progressive trade policy. I want to touch briefly on four points related to that progressive trade policy.
The first is environmental goods and services. Currently, both TPP and CETA agreements commit to identify and deepen the liberalization of environmental goods and services, including through both zero tariffs and the removal of non-tariff barriers. In recent years, as we've just heard from our colleagues from Halifax, green markets broadly have expanded and the pace of that expansion is accelerating since the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
In 2017, estimates showed that global investments in renewable energy alone were $333 billion, surpassing once again global investments in conventional energy sources. The global environmental goods and services market is estimated to be around $860 billion this year, with forecasts showing it could reach $1.9 trillion by 2020. Given this market dynamic, it's important that a Canada-Mercosur environmental chapter carve out an ambitious grouping of environmental goods and services.
The second point is standards. A Canada-Mercosur chapter on sustainable development should also support sustainability standards and amplify the example of CETA's chapter on sustainable development and its inclusion of eco-labelling and corporate social responsibility standards. A Canada-Mercosur agreement should focus not only on clean energy or clean technology standards, but also on a broader range of goods that are important to providing livelihoods to working families, including standards related to sustainable forestry, sustainable fisheries, and sustainable agriculture, as well as a range of other commodities, including sustainable mining operations and their related products and global value chains.
IISD colleagues review voluntary standards on an ongoing basis through the state of sustainability standards report. We're also working with the World Economic Forum and others to examine how voluntary standards are aligning with the sustainable development goals and how trade policy can support these efforts.
Third, Mr. Chair, is gender. The December 2017 Buenos Aires Joint Declaration on Trade and Women's Economic Empowerment, supported by 118 WTO member countries, is a positive step in supporting more women in trade. The challenge is implementation. The International Trade Centre continues to do good work in the area of e-commerce and women, and this could be one specific area in which a new agreement could make real headway.
Finally, honourable members, I want to touch upon investment. No doubt the committee is aware of the regional agreement on investment co-operation and facilitation within Mercosur. Building on Brazil's model development agreement of 2014, the regional agreement offers a new way to spur collaboration on investment and encourage investment flows.
Instead of focusing on investment protection, its primary goal is to facilitate investment flows and co-operation. It sets up a system of dispute avoidance rather than the adversarial dispute settlement through ISDS. As a last resort, the current model provides a state-to-state dispute settlement model rather than a state-to-company one. This approach could also be followed in a potential Canada-Mercosur agreement. In addition, Mr. Chair, Canada could also propose to build upon the CSR provisions included in the Mercosur investment agreement, as well as a sustainable development chapter, to integrate more fully and comprehensively investor responsibility looking ahead.
Finally, honourable colleagues, the Canada-Mercosur negotiations offer an opportunity to update and replace the outdated investment treaties in force between Canada and two Mercosur countries—Argentina and Uruguay.
Mr. Chair, that concludes my comments. Thank you very much.