Canada/European Union negotiations – the latest news

Steve Ver­heul, Canada’s chief nego­tia­tor, gave an account to civil soci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the lat­est rounds of dis­cus­sions by tele­con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, May 3. Over­all, things are not pro­gress­ing as quickly as hoped. Nego­ti­a­tions are prov­ing to be dif­fi­cult on a num­ber of fronts, notably because the Euro­peans must first har­mo­nize their posi­tion inter­nally (at the national and sub national level) before try­ing to come to an agree­ment with us. Fur­ther talks are planned for the months of June and July with hopes to be start­ing to close the deal in Sep­tem­ber. Monthly meet­ings with provinces and ter­ri­to­ries are being held monthly. Civil soci­ety groups will be also kept informed.

Noth­ing new on the cul­tural exemp­tion.  On copy­right how­ever, Ver­heul reported that good progress is being made. “We are where we need to be”. When asked if the CETA would go beyond C-11, he said Euro­peans had been insist­ing that Canada com­mits to the WIPO Inter­net Treaties, which it does in C-11. “They are reach­ing their level of com­fort”. Although from the Euro­peans’ point of view there are still a cou­ple of spe­cific out­stand­ing issues, he doubts that they will be push­ing hard know­ing that it will cost them to offer us some­thing in return.

Both Quebec’s and Canada’s chief nego­tia­tors of the CETA, Mr. Pierre-Marc John­son and Mr. Steve Ver­heul, will par­tic­i­pate in the Annual Gen­eral Meet­ing of the Coali­tion for Cul­tural Diver­sity which will take place in Mon­tréal on Fri­day June 1. We may get fresher infor­ma­tion from them!