Cheese, Drugs, Pork and Beef

There it is, Canada on the cusp of signing off on a free-trade deal with the 500-million-people-strong European Union. Canada is eager to conclude that trade agreement with the EU; the country has been attempting for more years than merely those the current government has been in power, to divert from trade dependence with the United States.

Recent slights have made that move toward diversification more imperative; relationships do not thrive on casual neglect.

As for the European Union, they have their free-trade aspirations set on moving on from the conclusion of the Canada-EU trade deal, toward one with the Americans. With the successful conclusion of the Canada-EU trade deal in its final stages, the EU is anxious to use it as a signal to the United States that it too will gain hugely by signing off on their own US-EU free trade agreement. To exponentially expand the NAFTA, in a sense.

For the European Union countries access to Canada for its dairy products, primarily cheeses, one imagines, attracts them. So does the potential for the pharmaceutical industry, with the EU insisting on an additional two-year extension on new patent rights, resisted by Canada's provinces as a certain increase in their already-burgeoning drug costs representing a step backward for Canada.

The EU insistence on extending the EU-Canada free trade deal to include bidding on government procurement projects will not be popular with the provinces and municipalities. Less expensive imported cheese products will most certainly not sweeten the sour taste of more expensive pharmaceuticals for a longer period, though that won't kick in for 9 years with a written-in 8-year protection clause.

The EU has given some assurance that Canada's supply management system for chicken and dairy products will be shielded from foreign competition. At the same time giving more accessibility for Canadian beef and pork producers to the EU market. With some additional target-moving it looks as though formalization is set to go.

Amazingly, the NDP appears not to be averse to the free trade deal, as long, states its leader Tom Mulcair, as it doesn't drive workers' wages down or impact deleteriously on working conditions within this country.