What could Canadians tangibly gain from our potential new partnership with the European Union? And what might we have to give up?
It’s been hard to get much sense of that, amid overheated reactions to Canada confusingly being invited by the EU to become an “associate member” — a position that doesn’t currently exist, and might not in itself mean too much if it did.
One of the few people in position to really know is Jonathan Wilkinson, the former federal minister appointed EU ambassador by Mark Carney this past spring, who’s now taking a lead in early negotiations around whatever it is that we’re negotiating.
When I spoke with him this week, the point he most wanted to drive home is that this isn’t about giving up any independence. The aim, he kept reiterating, is to bolster both sides’ sovereignty through shared resilience to global upheaval — an obvious reference to the chaos that U.S. President Donald Trump has unleashed, although he stepped carefully around that part.
But Wilkinson has a reputation as a policy wonk from his time in Ottawa, and was happy to delve into some of the talks’ more nitty-gritty aspects, particularly economic ones.
I came away with a few broad takeaways — including specific areas where we could see more cooperation, potential compromises to get them, and how quickly it could crystallize into something real.
These negotiations are more focused on particular industries than were past trade talks
Canada has an existing free trade agreement (known as CETA) with Europe. The goal now, per Wilkinson, is more aggressively cooperating in a select few areas with unrealized potential for increased trade and investment.
Defence spending was the first example he offered, with “a number of ideas about how those kinds of relationships could be deepened” to diversify from what’s traditionally been mostly a Canada-U.S. relationship, after Canada already earlier this year became the first non-European country to join the EU’s military-procurement financing program.
Tech, including AI and supercomputing, was the second. He framed the economic opportunity there as around both innovation and helping Canadian companies scale through access to a much larger market.
Greater natural resource exports from Canada was the third. On that front, he said, minerals are highest on the Europeans’ list and “extremely high” on Canada’s. Uranium and hydrogen are on there too, and maybe natural gas if some challenging economics and timelines could be made to work.
What’s not a priority? Agriculture, apparently, around which both sides have protectionist policies. Because of its complexities and sensitivities, he described it as “not a central focus.”
Possible changes to how we regulate things
Part of the sovereignty discourse is about whether we might align with EU in industrial regulation. Wilkinson suggested two ways Ottawa thinks it could be worth doing so.
One is around setting new rules around AI, with some potential strength in numbers as both sides worry about the safety and socioeconomic impacts of an industry dominated by the U.S. and China.
The other would be Canada recognizing certain European environmental or industrial-safety standards, and vice versa, if deemed to be as high or higher than domestically. That would potentially resolve some of the current bureaucratic trade hurdles.
Both sides might have to make a few other concessions
There’s reluctance, Wilkinson suggested, to get too hung up on longstanding trade grievances. (See Europe’s restrictions on beef with growth hormones.) But there still seem to be a few demands for compromises, from both sides.
For instance, he mentioned certain European environmental regulations that don’t recognize what Ottawa believes are strong Canadian standards, including around deforestation and lumber exports.
Meanwhile, the Europeans have issues with buy-Canadian procurement policies that have been adopted by the federal and provincial governments, as well as Canadian steel tariffs.
“Whether those will get resolved or not, we’ll see,” he said. “But some of them we have to think carefully about, because we are asking them to allow us to participate in a range of programming in Europe in a manner as though Canada were a European country.”
Canada isn’t too worried about Europe’s divides on the existing trade deal
One of the more common criticisms of this new round of bridge-building is that the aforementioned trade deal, generally known as CETA, still hasn’t been ratified by 10 of the EU’s 27 member countries (including France and Italy) nearly a decade after it was reached. Shouldn’t that be the focus first?
Wilkinson’s answer, more or less, is no.
The deal is 98 per cent in effect anyway because of continent-level adoptions, he said, and Canada-EU trade volumes having risen significantly (about 80 per cent) since 2016. “So the practical effect of the lack of ratification at some member state levels is not very much.”
We might also get (slightly) more Euro-cultured
As much as Canada has tried to become less reliant on the U.S., it’s been especially difficult in terms of the cultural content we consume — movies, TV, media and plenty else shaping our perspectives.
Wilkinson didn’t want to oversell how much that could change, despite making an obligatory reference to Canada’s new participation in the Eurovision Song Contest. But he pointed to the prospect of vastly more Canadian youth spending time in Europe (and vice versa) through greater Canadian inclusion in the EU’s Erasmus+ student-exchange program as a way cultural cross-fertilization could happen.
“I do think that more exposure and Canadians seeing and thinking more about Europe will eventually have an impact,” he said.
Some of this could happen sooner than later
Given the notoriously slow EU policy process, this whole effort seems to be geared at adjusting to long-term global shifts more than helping survive the final couple of years of Trump.
But when I suggested most benefits from any new deal might not be felt until the 2030s, Wilkinson pushed back.
He’s optimistic, for instance, that work toward a framework agreement for the European Investment Bank to back Canadian mining developments could bear fruit soon. And he highlighted defence procurement and the student exchanges as other near-term plays.
On those and other fronts, he predicted “the announcement of a whole bunch of initiatives” at the next Canada-EU meetings, to be hosted by Carney in Quebec in late October.
Until then, at least, he wouldn’t mind turning down the temperature of the public discourse about exactly how much closer we’ll become.
“What I’ve been counseling folks is it’s totally appropriate to have questions,” he said, “but I wouldn’t jump to the answers.”
