Council Calls for Public Support for Quick Adoption of FTA

CANADA - The Canadian Meat Council is encouraging the public to impress upon their members of Parliament the importance of quick adoption of the Canada South Korea Free Trade Agreement, writes Bruce Cochrane.
calendar icon 28 July 2014
clock icon 3 minute read

Last month the federal government tabled the text of the Canada-South Korea Free Trade Agreement in the House of Commons opening the door for possible adoption by 1 January.

Ron Davidson, the director of international trade, government and media relations with the Canadian Meat Council, notes the council had been pushing hard for the completion of negotiations and now that they have been completed it's pressing for as early as possible adoption.

Ron Davidson-Canadian Meat Council

We are behind the implementation of free trade agreements that Korea has signed with other countries including the United States and each year, each anniversary year, they have a further reduction in their import tariffs so we need to participate and start getting the Canadian reductions as quickly as possible.

The agreement has to be approved both in Canada and in South Korea.

Our understanding is that both governments are working toward trying to achieve that.

We hope they'll be successful but at this point we can only hope.

The target date that we have in mind and have had in mind since the agreement in principle was reached is 1 January of next year.

We're certainly hoping that the 1 January date will be met.

If not, as soon as possible thereafter because every day counts.

We will be pushing very hard and hoping that all parties in the House of Commons will come together and agree that this is an important agreement and that we need to recover our access to that market as quickly as possible.

Mr Davidson encourages Canadians to contact their members of Parliament and impress upon them the importance to the Canadian agri-food sector of recovering access to the South Korean market as quickly as possible.

© 2000 - 2024 - Global Ag Media. All Rights Reserved | No part of this site may be reproduced without permission.