On Friday, the House of Commons passed legislation to ratify the United States-Mexico Canada Agreement after which the Senate signed off on the bill. Speaking to Farmscape, Colin Robertson, the Vice President and a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, says ratification of the agreement by all three signatories brings much needed stability back to the North American trading platform.

“The uncertainty had basically frozen up investment by Canadians in Canada and certainly by foreign investment in Canada, as the Governor of the Bank of Canada had remarked,” says Robertson.

“A similar situation applied in Mexico as well so I think that it brings stability back to North America.

“The North American platform has everything going for it. We’ve got a young population, we’ve got a highly educated population, we’ve got a massive market of 500 million people with the United States, Mexico and Canada, we’ve got energy a plenty and we’ve been working together.

“The supply chain that we’ve established since the NAFTA came into effect in 1994 are working well and working better but what this agreement does is give the assurance to foreign investors and investors within North America that you can continue to do business with a set of rules which all have agreed to that includes dispute settlement.

“Now what we do is bring much needed stability back to the North American market at a time when, because of COVID-19 and the dropping price of oil, we really do need to bring stability back to North America.”

Robertson acknowledges each country still must go through the steps to confirm conditions for implementation have been met after which the USMCA will replace the current North American Free Trade Agreement.