Informal Heads of Delegation Meeting - February 25, 2021

Canada’s statement

As indicated in past statements, Canada remains committed to a global response to the pandemic that leverages the entire multilateral trading system in supporting the research, development, manufacturing, and distribution of safe and effective treatments for COVID-19. Canada has reviewed the TRIPS waiver proposal from Bolivia, Egypt, Eswatini, India, Kenya, Mongolia, Mozambique, Pakistan, the African Group and South Africa, and has actively participated in the TRIPS Council discussions on these important issues. Canada is confident that Members will be able to resolve any concrete obstacles identified by Members by consensus and looks forward to further constructive discussions in TRIPS Council in this regard.

Canada continues to place a priority on advancing the agriculture negotiations and we will play a constructive role across all agriculture issues in order to develop a credible package for MC12. On domestic support, we strongly believe that an outcome based on the Cairns Group Framework is both realistic and doable. This would mean that members agree at MC12 to reduce global trade distorting entitlements by half by 2030. Post MC12, Members would then negotiate the specific modalities to reach this goal with the principle that those with the highest entitlements would contribute the most to the outcome. In addition, for MC12, steps can be taken to improve transparency and predictability in agriculture trade. To this end, we are encouraged by the level of engagement and momentum on our paper with Brazil, Australia, and Ukraine on tariff transparency and shipments en route. We also believe our proposal on export competition with Norway and Switzerland would enhance transparency without increasing the burden on Members.

For the fisheries subsidies negotiations, we are fully committed to concluding an agreement as soon as possible. At this stage, the negotiations would benefit most from frank exchanges in a small group format where the Chair is empowered to ask questions of participants and explore compromise options. The priority for those discussions should be to establish the disciplines for subsidies to IUU fishing and Overcapacity and Overfishing, together with a discipline on transparency, and then determine an S&DT framework to address capacity issues in implementing the disciplines.

On e-commerce, we welcome the progress made to date, including the cleaning of the text on unsolicited commercial messages. Canada is committed to work towards the milestones identified by the co-conveners for the summer 2021, and we thank them and the facilitators for their efforts. We also encourage JSI participants to further consider making a version of the consolidated text publicly available, which would support our respective engagement with interested stakeholders.

On services domestic regulation, the revised reference paper demonstrates we achieved a meaningful milestone in 2020 by resolving all the drafting issues in the text. We thank the Chair for his leadership and note that it will be important to maintain momentum towards finalizing the text in the near future, while actively pursuing the scheduling exercise for conclusion at MC12.

As noted during the last TNC meeting, Canada is pleased to be part of the group of WTO members that launched the Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions on November 17th. The first formal meeting will take place on March 5 and I sincerely hope that all WTO members will join us for this meeting.

Finally, we continue to be very concerned about the Appellate Body’s inability to hear appeals and reiterate our willingness to engage in constructive discussions towards resolving the impasse. In the meantime, Canada maintains that the MPIA is the best means to preserve Members’ rights under the DSU and invite all Members that have not joined to consider doing so.

Thank you.