Earlier this week Canada and Mexico officially become participants of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations joining Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Australia, Malaysia, Viet Nam, Brunei and the United States.

Canadian Pork Council executive director Martin Rice says, since the breakdown of World Trade Organisation negotiations, the TPP is increasingly being seen as the alternative platform from which to grow larger trade agreements.

Martin Rice-Canadian Pork Council:

I'd say at least two areas that we would look for gains for Canada. First would be better access into the members that are participating in TPP negotiations now. That probably would be Vietnam primarily.

Other countries in the TPP such as Malaysia and Brunei are not important pork markets particularly. Other countries in the TPP we have trade agreements with already such as Chile, the United States and also we've always had favourable terms of trade with New Zealand and Australia.

Never the less there's definitely an appreciable potential there for increased exports. I think the bigger benefit is that Canada is into this important trade negotiation platform that is the TPP.

Everyone anticipates there will be other countries that are on the Pacific realm of the world that will want to get into TPP and of course we would be very interested to see countries like Korea and China in addition to Japan want to get into this deal. The later we get into TPP the less influence we have in terms of how the terms of those countries will be brought into the agreement and also just how the agreement operates for us.

Rice observes, the TPP partnership has taken on greater importance since the collapse of Doha round of the World Trade Organisation negotiations.