International Trade committee  Well, when we started the negotiations we agreed officially that everything was on the table. That was an explicit agreement at the beginning. As to whether everything will be on the table at the end of the negotiations, that's a different question.

International Trade committee  Well, it's more on the European side at the moment where most of the focus is. The commission only recently gained new competence in the area of investment protection; it was always left to member states in the past. The European Union needs to develop an approach to investor p

International Trade committee  Sure. This was an area we wanted to concentrate on right from the beginning, because certainly the business community was telling us that a lot of the barriers in the EU market didn't relate to tariffs necessarily but more to regulatory standards and various other kinds of non-ta

International Trade committee  We spent quite a bit of time on fish, as you might expect, over the course of the negotiations. We made it clear from the beginning that it was one of our primary offensive objectives. It's certainly the number one objective for most of the eastern provinces, and an important obj

International Trade committee  It is an area we're going to be spending a lot of time on, because I think the EU and Canada share a common objective in that area, for the most part. I don't think either of us has major concerns about investment protection in each other's markets, but we also want to set an exa

International Trade committee  The international trade committee is the committee the European negotiators are providing updates to on a regular basis. So they'll be the ones most familiar with what's in the eventual agreement and with what's happening in the negotiations. They would take a first look at it an

International Trade committee  My understanding is that it's not a necessary step.

International Trade committee  That's my understanding.

International Trade committee  No. This issue first came up around the same time as the launching of the negotiations in May of 2009. Both sides reached an explicit agreement that we would not allow that issue to distract from the negotiations. So we have not discussed it. We have not tried to do anything on t

International Trade committee  Well, we're not aiming specifically to complete it all by April, although hopefully we will be well advanced towards that. There will probably be a need for further negotiations after April, but they may not necessarily take the form of a full negotiating round. There will be a s

International Trade committee  I don't anticipate it would have much impact on the negotiations themselves, because I think my counterparts in the European Commission would recognize that statements that might be made might not necessarily represent the views of Canada in the negotiations. I may get certain qu

International Trade committee  Well, I think there's a lot of very important work beyond the negotiations themselves. At lot of this, at the end of the day, will be about influencing groups that don't have a direct role in the negotiations, such as the European Parliament, as well as influencing representative

International Trade committee  Yes, although I'm not sure exactly when we're anticipating that it will be delivered. I know I've signed off on most of the briefings now, so it shouldn't be that far away. I can assure you that it will be a very comprehensive briefing package, so hopefully it will meet all of th

International Trade committee  From a general perspective, in this negotiation with the EU we will be going far beyond what was negotiated with the U.S. in relation to the Buy American act. We'll be covering a lot more ground in the range of areas that will be subject to government procurement obligations, and

Agriculture committee  Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for inviting us to speak to you today about the Canada-European Union comprehensive economic and trade agreement, known as the CETA. As requested, I will provide an overview of the negotiations. Then Gilles Gauthier, Canada’s chi