International Trade committee  Okay. Thank you very much. In the original CUFTA agreement, we had an e-commerce chapter. An expanded digital trade chapter ensures that customs duties will not be applied to digital products transmitted electronically, so that commitment that Canada has continued to promote at the WTO will be protected in this bilateral agreement.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. None of us know how long this war in Ukraine will drag on, but having a free trade agreement implemented, where our service providers, companies and producers can engage on the ground floor to help Ukraine with the reconstruction efforts, positions us well to do so.

International Trade committee  I would think so, Mr. Chair. Canada holds exploratory discussions at the outset to get a sense of what the scope and parameters of an agreement would look like, whether our sensitive areas can be accommodated in an agreement and how our offensive versus defensive interests align.

International Trade committee  A party could recommend including new provisions across the agreement or new chapters, but both parties would have to agree before that was established.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. Thank you for your question. Throughout our consultations with Canadian stakeholders, we heard, I would say, complete support for Canada to move forward with a modernized free trade agreement. The specific area that we heard about from the business community was the importance of including provisions on investments and services, as they would have liked to see them included in the original CUFTA.

International Trade committee  Thank you for your questions. Just to clarify my previous comment, I was responding to a question on whether we could sit down with Ukraine at this juncture and negotiate new provisions to the agreement. Since the agreement is signed, our leaders have told us that this text is now ready for ratification.

International Trade committee  Thank you for your question. The new provisions in the environment chapter do recognize the importance of mutually supported trade and climate change policies and the importance that one doesn't.... Climate change or trade and investment promotion measures can't impact on a party's ability to also promote their climate measures, and that would be ultimately to achieve green growth objectives.

International Trade committee  They have, as I mentioned, a similar process as does Canada. The main difference is that, in theory, their process is more streamlined because they have only one chamber in their Parliament, as opposed to Canada's having two. They have further flexibility in terms of the number of readings and debates that can take place in their Parliament.

International Trade committee  Yes, there are core obligations and transparency provisions. I'll ask my colleague Mr. Foster to address the question more specifically.

International Trade committee  We haven't done that type of analysis in terms of how a potential carbon tax would have an impact on future reconstruction efforts in Ukraine.

International Trade committee  I'm not really in a position to comment on Ukraine's imports of coal from Russia. That's a situation that's obviously changing.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. As I think I mentioned in answer to a previous question, as we engaged in these modernization discussions, we explained to Ukraine that Canada had developed more rigorous provisions in our labour chapter, provisions that are subject to dispute settlement. At various points along the road, we asked Ukraine if they were prepared to take on the higher standard provisions that Canada has been negotiating in the labour chapter of the CPTPP, in CUSMA and in CETA, and the Ukrainians continued to demonstrate that they didn't want Canada to weaken our typical standards or rules in order to accommodate them.

International Trade committee  The new provisions provide more general rules that are tailored to the unique nature of the financial sectors in both Canada and Ukraine. The chapter includes core obligations such as market access, as I mentioned earlier, and also supports to key trade policy considerations such as affording national treatment and most favoured nation status to financial services crossing both borders.

International Trade committee  They certainly would in the CPTPP, but under an eventual bilateral agreement, they could not. In the case of the Canada-U.K. agreement, they would have to seek recourse through domestic courts.

International Trade committee  The Government of Canada would have to table legislation in Parliament, through a bill, for Canada to be able to ratify the U.K. accession to the CPTPP.