Mr. Arun Alexander at the International Trade Committee

On February 7th, 2022. See this statement in context.

February 7th, 2022 / 4:45 p.m.

Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Trade Policy and Negotiations, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development

Arun Alexander

I could answer that question, Madam Chair.

I think CUSMA has a much more effective dispute settlement mechanism than under NAFTA. We've improved it greatly. Under NAFTA, the United States or another party could frustrate the system by refusing to participate, perhaps by not responding to a request for consultations. This would frustrate the ability to establish a panel.

Those impediments have now been removed under CUSMA, so panels are automatically established. Furthermore, the timelines for the decisions of the panel have been reduced, so they will become faster.

I believe the new CUSMA dispute settlement system is a good improvement on the NAFTA one, and also it's faster than the WTO.

We're hopeful that we will see the resolution of some of these cases and we do have a number of the cases before panels quickly.

See context to find out what was said next.