The EU-Canada free-trade deal has received a seal of approval from the B.C. Liberal government.

Teresa Wat, B.C.'s minister for international trade and Asia Pacific strategy, praised the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement in a statement issued after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed the document in Brussels.

“Next to the North American Free Trade Agreement, CETA is Canada’s most-historic trade initiative," Wat said. "Once CETA is implemented, Canada will be strategically positioned to become one of the few developed countries with preferential access to the world's two largest markets: the  European Union and the United States."

The agreement still needs to be ratified in Parliament and by the 28 members of the European Union (though one member, the United Kingdom, has pledged to leave).

"Specifically, B.C. exporters will benefit from increased access to this enormous market, including duty-free access for forestry and wood products, as well as new markets for metals and mineral products, agricultural and agrifoods products, fish and seafood," Watt said. “By making it easier for trade and investment between Canada and the European Union, the key outcome of this agreement is clear: more jobs and economic opportunities for British Columbians."

In September, the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the German nongovernmental organization Power Shift released a report that criticized CETA's "investment court", which allows investors to sue governments for damages. According to the authors, this could expose governments to financial liabilities for offering new services.

“CETA, as drafted, interferes with governments’ ability to expand public services and reverse privatizations,” said CCPA trade researcher Scott Sinclair in a news release last month. “The agreement can and should be amended to fully exclude public services. Official ‘clarifications’ that don’t change the text should not fool anyone into believing public services are protected."

The report also suggested that by "extending extraordinary protections to foreign investors in CETA, Canada will further erode the rights of indigenous peoples". 

Even though the deal includes a reservation for aboriginal affairs, the CCPA stated that the investor-state settlement mechanism in CETA still gives corporations another set of rights in land-claim disputes. And this could encourage the federal government to adopt a harder line in this area.

Moreover, Sinclair and the CCPA's Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood pointed out in the report that Canadians pay higher prescription drug costs than people living in most other developed countries. They stated that Canadian negotiators "agreed to lock in" these prices at their current levels.

"In addition, CETA will require two major changes to Canadian law," they noted. "First, Canada must adopt a system of patent term restoration that would provide brand-name drug companies up to an additional two years of market exclusivity. Second, Canada must provide a right of appeal to brand-name drug companies in patent-linkage cases, which could delay the approval process for generic drugs by up to eighteen months."

Last week, France's ambassador to Canada, Nicolas Chapuis, told the Straight that the investor-state dispute-settlement mechanism is better than what exists under NAFTA. That's because there will be judges, rather than private lawyers with private interests, issuing rulings on complaints filed by corporations against national governments.

Meanwhile, Canadian provinces have agreed to abide by the procurement provisions of CETA, which provide a level playing field for European bidders going up against Canadian companies for public contracts.

Municipal governments are a creation of the provinces and have no constitutional standing on their own. The CCPA argues that local governments across Canada must also abide by this requirement, which means an end to measures that might favour local bidders.

"Under CETA, a wide range of Canadian sub-central entities will now be prohibited from favouring local suppliers or applying local content requirements to procurement contracts—both important economic tools currently available to many governments," the report states. "CETA not only guarantees non-discriminatory but unconditional access to the Canadian procurement market for EU companies. Under CETA, Canadian procuring entities cannot obligate EU suppliers to contribute positively to local economic development--even if such contract conditions apply equally to Canadian and EU companies."