International Trade committee  I don't see a connection between the free trade agreement and that issue.

International Trade committee  There are financial services provisions to provide rules to allow Canadian financial services providers more predictability, transparency, and stability in terms of their doing business in Panama, but with respect to flows of capital back and forth and facilitating the drug trade

International Trade committee  To my knowledge, it has not, not by the Canadian government.

International Trade committee  No, we didn't. Because the trade with Panama is so small, as we discussed earlier—it's fast-growing but it's relatively small—we didn't do that kind of modelling for this agreement. Instead, we took the approach of consulting stakeholders, etc., across the country trying to narro

International Trade committee  I believe that's correct. The agreement was signed in May 2010. The first implementing bill was introduced in the fall of 2010.

International Trade committee  I'm really not in a position to comment on how quickly Parliament moves or doesn't move on a bill, but it has been that long, yes.

International Trade committee  We touched on this briefly last week. The United States Congress approved the U.S.-Panama free trade agreement in October 2011. President Obama signed it later that month. Our understanding is that the United States and Panama are now moving forward to implement that FTA as early

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  I believe it ranks 84th.

International Trade committee  Mr. Chair, I think the officials from the various departments really are here to answer technical questions with respect to the free trade agreement itself and the TIEA, of course, but these broader matters of government policy I think are questions more appropriately raised with

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to be here today to answer any additional questions you may have on the Canada-Panama Free Trade Agreement. You will recall, Mr. Chair, that the last time we appeared before this committee we committed to providing exact figures in response to

International Trade committee  Canada and Panama now have certain commitments to one another with respect to trade and services via the WTO. Through this agreement we basically built on those commitments and liberalized trade a little bit more in those areas. In particular we negotiated both national treatment

International Trade committee  Non-tariff barriers are a different issue. Those would be, for example, government regulations other than tariffs behind the border, which can sometimes—inadvertently, perhaps—discriminate against foreign products. We do have provisions with respect to technical barriers to trade

International Trade committee  The U.S. in fact had concluded the negotiations of their free trade agreement with Panama before Canada began to negotiate with Panama, but they had not yet signed the agreement. It was during that period that we moved in and negotiated ourselves, over a period of about a year, b

International Trade committee  Certainly all of Canada's supply-managed products are excluded from tariff elimination or tariff cuts under this agreement, and likewise there were some sensitive products on the Panamanian side. They had also included some dairy and poultry products, for example, and certain sug