Thank you very much.
Madam Chair, committee members, thank you for the invitation to take part in your meeting on Bill C-18, an act to implement the agreement on trade continuity between Canada and the United Kingdom.
The Business Council of Canada is composed of 150 chief executives and entrepreneurs of Canada's leading enterprises. Our members directly and indirectly support more than six million jobs across the country and hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Representing different industries and regions, these men and women are united in their commitment to make Canada the best country in which to live, work, invest and grow.
It's been said many times before, but it bears repeating, that Canada is a trading nation, and many Canadian companies rely on the rules-based trading system, as well as our networks of bilateral free trade agreements, to provide certainty and access to global markets.
Given its prominent role in the economy, we expect international trade to be an important part of Canada's economic recovery. The facts speak for themselves. Merchandise exports to the world fell by 12.3% in 2020 because of the pandemic, a decline of $70 billion. Canada needs to work hard in the years ahead to restore and grow our exports from precrisis levels.
The potential loss of preferential market access to the U.K., secured under CETA, presented a serious risk to the recovery for Canadian exporters. The U.K. is Canada's third-largest merchandise export market. It was also one of the few markets in the world in which we were able to sustain our exports from last year despite the crisis.
The U.K., as part of the EU, has been a critical component of Canada's fast-growing transatlantic trade relationship. Before the pandemic, it accounted for 40% of Canada's merchandise exports and 36% of service exports to the EU. Merchandise exports to the U.K. grew by nearly 12% since provisional application. Canadian exporters had momentum in the U.K. before the pandemic, and it's important that we continue to grow our trade.
When I spoke to the committee during negotiations, I mentioned how time-sensitive a Canada-U.K. trade deal is. Not only did we risk losing preferential market access by reverting to the WTO most-favoured nation tariff rates, but many of our peers were negotiating bilateral deals that would have undermined our competitiveness in the market.
Given our existing trade relationship with the U.K. under CETA, and the uncertainty surrounding the future of U.K.-EU relations during the negotiations, the transitional trade deal approach taken by our negotiators was the best approach for Canada. The transitional approach provided Canada with an opportunity to take this new relationship into account when we negotiate a long-term trade deal.
As with Canada's existing free trade agreements, we want to ensure that we reach a conclusive deal in the future with appropriate consultation and assessment of the market opportunities for Canadian firms. The transitional approach will also allow us to do that while we maintain our position in the market.
We were pleased to see that a Canada-U.K. trade continuity agreement manages to preserve our gains under CETA. Like CETA, the TCA's benefits include the elimination of 98% of tariffs on Canadian merchandise exports to the U.K. and will eliminate 99% within a few years. This is in addition to important market access opportunities in government procurement and services, among others.
At the same time, because Canada and the U.K. agreed to negotiate a new deal in the future, the TCA does not require that our future trade relationship be based exclusively on our existing EU agreement.
Our priority today is to quickly ratify the TCA. The existing memorandum of understanding between Canada and the U.K. is a helpful stopgap measure but it is time-sensitive. The U.K. is retooling its international relationships and there is a clear opportunity to reimage our bilateral trade and investment ties with a comprehensive and ambitious trade agreement. We hope both parties can start working on this with stakeholders as soon as the TCA is in force.
The Business Council of Canada reiterates the importance of swiftly ratifying the TCA. This agreement provides certainty for businesses at a time of great uncertainty. It will help our economy to recover by driving trade and attracting the capital needed to innovate, grow and improve Canadians' quality of life through the creation of well-paying jobs.
Thank you for the opportunity to address your committee. I look forward to answering questions.