What I'm concerned with right now is that we have politics going on in the United States and the reality is that I can't change what the dynamic is going to be on that side. What I do know is when we have a bad deal in front of us.
What I also know, from a 2016 report by Jim Stanford, is that Canada's average annual trade performance is better with nations when there is no free trade agreement in place. We have that document. He's an economist. Other economists support that initiative. Canada's exports to FTA partner countries grew, not including the United States, by only 1.2% annually, while exports to non-FTA partners grew by 6.8% annually. That's between 2001 and 2014. That should tell you volumes that free trade agreements do not work. Again by extension, manufacturing exports to FTA partner countries declined by 0.3% each year, yet manufacturing exports to non-FTA partner countries grew by 4.2% each year.
Those are dynamic numbers that prove that free trade agreements just don't work, not the way they're being negotiated today.