A former Liberal trade minister who oversaw the successful 1993 conclusion of a world trade negotiation said the current World Trade Organization negotiation is essentially dead.Roy MacLaren, trade minister from 1993 to 1996 and now chair of a Canada-European business lobby, was explaining to MPs on the House of Commons international trade committee why the European Union has agreed to free trade talks with Canada after years of rejecting the idea.“With the faltering, and now I would say the demise of the Doha Round of the WTO – most unfortunate but I think we might as well recognize the facts – the European Union has decided that it’s time to negotiate with a developed country to see whether a complex and comprehensive agreement can be successfully achieved,” he said June 10.Later, his colleague Jason Langrish of the Canada-European Roundtable for Business talked about “the collapse, or at least the suspension, of the Doha Round negotiations.”Kathleen Sullivan, executive director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance and a fellow witness at the committee hearing on the Canada-Europe free trade talks, objected.“We continue to believe that the WTO has much life in it,” she said. “We’re quite optimistic that we will find a way forward through the WTO and it does continue to be our priority in agriculture.”MacLaren changed his words slightly but not his message.“We’re all in favour of the Doha Round but we know perfectly well, you know perfectly well, that the Democratic Congress in the United States is not going to give Barack Obama fast track (authority) for the Doha Round in the remainder of his present term or if he is re-elected for the four following years,” he said.“For no other reason than that, the Doha Round is, to put it kindly, suspended.”It started in late 2001 and was supposed to be completed in three years.Fast track authority allows the president to present a treaty to the U.S. Congress and legislators have the choice of either accepting it or rejecting it in its complete form.MacLaren, minister during the final tense months of negotiations for changes to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that ended successfully in 1993, experienced first-hand the importance of the fact that congressional fast track authority granted to president Bill Clinton allowed the talks to conclude.
Read Also
Saskatchewan puts crown land auction on hold
Auctions of Saskatchewan crown lease land are once again on hold.
