Original article published March 15, 2019 by www.edc.ca
March 8 marked the one-year anniversary of the signing of Canada’s newest free trade agreement: the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)—that eliminates most tariffs across all sectors. But it took several months to implement, and by October 2018, only six—Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore—of the 11 participating nations had ratified the deal, enabling its implementation on December 30, 2018. Vietnam followed in January 2019, and the remaining signatories—Chile, Malaysia, Peru and Brunei—will fall in line as their governments ink the deal in their parliaments.
Once it’s fully in force, Canada will have access to 495 million consumers. That number may well grow since Colombia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and the United Kingdom have expressed interest in joining.
To help Canadian business people access the agreement, we attended a workshop at Invest Ottawa, given by Christian Sivière, who runs Solimpex, a trade and logistics company based in Montreal, Que. To match the number of countries in the agreement, he shared 11 valuable tips on accessing the CPTPP.
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