International Trade committee  Well, our intention on both sides as negotiators is to complete as much of this agreement as we possibly can and to have some hope that we can do it all. As in any negotiation that includes some difficult issues, chances are that we may need some political direction on a handful

International Trade committee  Sorry, I missed that last part.

International Trade committee  I don't think there's been any suggestion that we haven't been meeting our cultural obligations. I haven't heard that from any of the cultural representatives. I haven't heard it from any organization. In fact, I think there's a recognition that we're very strong on protecting ou

International Trade committee  First, on the deadline, I think it's clear that we are within range of that deadline. We're very well advanced on the text of the agreement. We're well over half finished on the chapters. In the remaining chapters, only a small number of differences are separating us. We've tab

International Trade committee  I think you pointed out the most relevant fact yourself. It's a huge market in the EU, $2.3 trillion. That is a market that we have left virtually untapped up until now. It's not just a market of direct sales from Canada to the EU. There are a lot of global value chains that go i

International Trade committee  As far as the most challenging parts of the negotiations, I think if you talk to anybody involved in negotiations of this type, the most difficult is the work at home. It's all of the consultations you need to establish your positions, and all the work we need to do, especially i

International Trade committee  On the cultural issues, we've spent a lot of time consulting with cultural industry representatives. I had the most recent meeting with them about a month ago in Toronto. I think that's the third or fourth meeting I've had with them that has gone into great detail on what they se

International Trade committee  The rule-of-origin issue has been a challenging one across many sectors. It comes partly from the fact that just as the EU 27 member countries have integrated their market, our market is to a large extent integrated with the U.S., especially in some sectors. This has added anothe

International Trade committee  Yes, it certainly has. We've spent at least a few days every month with the provinces and the territories in face-to-face negotiations. We've spent a lot of time going through these issues, and government procurement has been one that we spent more time on than others. When we pu

International Trade committee  Yes, the EU has certainly expressed concerns about our copyright law, as have other governments around the world, and that's partly because we haven't updated that law for many years, and obviously technology has been moving at a fairly quick pace during that period. So I think t

International Trade committee  Yes, I'd be happy to. This is one of those areas where we've focused a lot of attention, because as I mentioned earlier, access to markets is not just about what you do at the border with tariffs. To get effective access and to be able to compete, you need to deal with the regul

International Trade committee  That number is also derived from the Canada-EU joint economic study that we completed before we initiated the negotiations. That was a very in-depth examination across the economy of the benefits that could be gained on both sides in this negotiation, by top economists both in Eu

International Trade committee  Certainly agriculture would be a significant one. Fish and seafood will be very important, particularly to the east coast. Probably the greatest job gains would be in the manufacturing sector where we'll have access and a preferential edge over other suppliers, in particular the

International Trade committee  That's been a big focus of our discussions with the EU, and in particular we have attached a lot of priority to labour mobility as part of the outcome of this agreement. We are very close to finalizing a chapter on mutual recognition of qualifications, which will allow a framewor

International Trade committee  Sure. We have had some discussions on the cultural exemption, and we come to this negotiation from a somewhat different direction from the EU. Traditionally the EU doesn't have a broad cultural exemption in their free trade agreements, as we do. They have a fairly narrow one that