Free
Trade Area of the Americas:
The Challenges Ahead
Comments to the 7th Annual
International Air Cargo
Conference
by David Kilgour, Secretary
of State (Latin America
& Africa)
Ottawa Congress Centre,
Colonel By Room, May 14,
1998
It is a pleasure
on behalf of the Government of Canada to
welcome participants of the International
Air Cargo Conference. This is your seventh
annual conference, but only the first time
it has been held outside the United States.
Your conference coincides with Ottawa’s
Tulip Festival. If any of the previous speakers
have told you this city blooms with flowers
all year round, it is not my place here
to contradict them.
Your conference
is also timely in that it comes at a time
when the Americas are drawing closer together.
Free trade arrangements are breaking out
everywhere in the hemisphere, and there
is a widespread consensus to move forward
toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas
by the year 2005.
Leaders from
throughout the hemisphere met last month
in Santiago to move forward with the FTAA.
Canada is proud to be chairing the Trade
Negotiations Committee for the next 18 months.
These talks will be continuing in Miami,
and we hope to sustain the momentum generated
during the last three years.
As people
involved in the air cargo business, it is
obvious that you have a vital stake in the
FTAA negotiations in particular, and the
broader issue of trade liberalization in
general. Any international developments
that enhance trade are bound to mean more
air cargo shipped and more business for
you. That is why it is crucial to enlist
your support and that of your customers
and colleagues not here today in delivering
the free trade message to the public.
One of the
biggest challenges we currently face is
the current lack of fast-track authority
for the U.S. Administration to negotiate
the FTAA. Another is persuading the general
public that freer trade is a winning proposition.
I say this knowing that many of you, especially
among our American guests, strongly support
the FTAA and are applying all the pressure
you can to obtain fast-track authority as
soon as possible.
Some said
in Washington the other day that even some
in industries which have benefited the most
from NAFTA are sometimes cool to FTAA. How
low does the U.S. unemployment rate have
to go before critics realize that freer
trade is a win-win proposition?
The lack
of fast-track authority must not stop us
from moving forward in this seven-year process.
We are in this for the long haul, and we
face an obstacle on the road – not
an insurmountable barrier. But we cannot
allow ourselves to lose momentum. The lack
of fast-track, if we are not careful, could
become a pretext for paralysis. Americans,
if they put themselves in their neighbours’
shoes, must ask themselves why an entire
hemisphere would engage in complex FTAA
negotiations when the commitment of the
largest economy is in doubt. Canada, and
probably every other country in the Americas,
wants to see fast-track approved early in
the talks. No one wants to negotiate twice.
This message must be conveyed loudly and
clearly to the U.S. Congress.
The second
challenge is ensuring that the public is
involved in the process and supports it.
As chair in the first critical months, one
of Canada’s major concerns will be
to get the message out. We must ensure that
the private sector is kept informed on the
issues and the progress achieved. It is
essential that public opinion be brought
with us. Canada has taken a proactive approach
in engaging our civil society in the FTAA
process, and we have consulted with many
groups. We have found that, in the end,
we have the same goal – a strong, vibrant
economy and jobs for our people.
Our efforts
are about more than trade. At Santiago and
in other discussions we have committed to
address improving education and training,
eradicating poverty and building democratic
institutions. This multifaceted approach
makes it easier for other groups in society
to buy into the process.
As chair,
Canada will do whatever it can to ensure
that the Committee on Civil Society –
which we welcome – is successful in
its mandate to constructively engage our
members of civil society on FTAA issues.
This includes business, labour, environmental
and academic groups. In the months leading
up to Santiago, our government undertook
a number of forums and public consultations
across the country with civil society. This
spirit of consultation must continue.
The negotiations
themselves present challenges. One will
be reconciling the interests of the 34 diverse
nations involved in the FTAA process, which
are of varying sized economies. How does
Trinidad, for example, with 1 million people
go face to face with Brazil with 160 million,
or the United States with more than 260
million?
Canada has
long been a champion of the smaller economy
countries and we understand their concerns
about their ability to participate in the
FTAA negotiating process. As chair of negotiations
for the next year and a half, Canada will
listen attentively to their views. We are
also providing technical assistance to improve
their negotiating capacities. We are fully
aware that the FTAA is a large undertaking
for these countries and we are prepared
to consider, on a case-by-case basis, the
special needs of smaller economies. At the
end of the day, however, all countries must
have the same rights and obligations.
Canada’s
interest in hemispheric trade did not begin
with the Summit of the Americas process.
We have been actively moving toward freer
hemispheric trade for some time now, both
at the regional and bilateral levels as
well as in the hemispheric and global arenas.
We advocate the "co-existence"
of the FTAA with regional and sub-regional
agreements because these are stepping stones
to regional integration and a more open
global multilateral system. The different
tracks of our policy are by no means mutually
exclusive. Rather they are complementary.
Our various regional trade initiatives over
the years might be compared with building
bridges.
The first
bridge we built was to the United States
– the planet’s largest economy,
and already by far our largest trading partner,
a longstanding friend and ally. There are
very few secrets in Canada’s relations
with the U.S. Today let me share with you
one of the best-kept secrets – the
NAFTA is working. Trade between Canada and
the U.S. has more than doubled in the ten
years since we implemented our bilateral
FTA. Our two-way trade is now more than
one billion dollars a day. The increase
alone in U.S. exports to Canada in 1997
over 1996 was greater than total U.S. exports
to countries like China, France or Italy.
Our next
bridge, NAFTA in 1994, added Mexico to the
relationship, and was an expression of Canadian
desire to reach out to Latin America. With
NAFTA we faced and are meeting the challenge
of reconciling the interests of nations
with vastly different economies. Again,
this experience has provided many lessons
that will serve us in the next seven years
as we move toward the FTAA.
For our next
bridge, Canada hoped to include Chile in
NAFTA. We refused to be held back when the
U.S. Congress declined to give the Administration
fast-track authority to negotiate a wider
agreement. Instead, Canada concluded by
itself a bilateral free trade agreement
with Chile, largely based on the NAFTA model.
Our bridge to Chile gives us a significant
link with South America, which is a major
market for us.
We have intensified
discussions with MERCOSUR, the trading bloc
in South America’s southern cone, aimed
at reaching a Trade and Investment Cooperation
agreement with it. Recently Canada signed
a memorandum of understanding on trade and
investment with Central America, and we
have begun a dialogue with the Andean Community.
Of equal importance is our historical relationship
with the CARICOM countries in the Caribbean,
ties that we continue to build.
The FTAA
process has already borne fruit. Trade talks
are breaking out everywhere. The FTAA process
has spurred regional trade talks and vice
versa. Do not the different discussions
build on and reinforce one another?
Barriers
between the nations of the Americas are
tumbling and the outcome can only be increased
trade. I envision a day when air cargo moves
as easily from Vancouver to Buenos Aires
as it does today from Chicago to New York
or Edmonton to Toronto. Let’s all of
us rise to the challenges and make that
vision a reality.
Prime
Minister Chrétien
summed up our evolving relationship
with the hemisphere in his
remarks at the closing of
last month’s Summit
of the Americas in Santiago.
"It is clear,"
he said, "that we are
becoming something more
than amigos. We are becoming
una gran familia."
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