Canada’s Pursuit of Reciprocity in Negotiating Temporary Entry in Trade Agreements
Meredith B. Lilly1
Many countries are facing shortages of high-skilled labour. According to Manpower Group’s 2018 survey of employers in forty-three countries, 45 percent reported skills shortages, the highest level since the survey’s 2006 commencement (ManpowerGroup 2018). The labour-shortage issue is complex and stems from many factors. Demographics clearly play a role in Western countries, including Canada, where large-scale retirements by the baby-boom generation combined with decades of low fertility rates have reduced the domestic labour supply. Immigration is often used as a policy tool to counteract these forces in countries with very restrictive immigration policies, such as Japan, where labour shortages are even greater (ManpowerGroup 2018).
Although Western policy-makers recognize that high-skilled migration can help address labour shortages, in many countries populism-fuelled anti-immigrant sentiments are also growing (Bremmer 2018). In Europe, for example, few leaders, with the notable exception of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Merkel 2018), have defended immigration as a mechanism to address the continent’s economic and societal challenges. This lack of political will to champion immigration at multilateral forums has contributed to deadlock over improving high-skilled labour mobility through such instruments as the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) (Lilly 2019). It has also left countries such as Canada—whose citizens and leaders remain supportive of immigration—somewhat isolated in their efforts to advance international labour mobility.
Despite these factors, one area of migration policy that continues to advance is the use of visa programs to allow high-skilled foreign workers to fill occupational shortages on a temporary basis (Hainmueller, Hiscox, and Margalit 2015). Examples include the H-1B visa in the United States and the high-wage temporary foreign worker (TFW) program in Canada. Both countries’ programs require employers to demonstrate domestic shortages in the specific occupation applied for, employer sponsorship of foreign national applicants, and time limits on work visas, precluding permanent residency in the host country. Although both American and Canadian programs have been revised over the years, Canada overhauled its program extensively between 2013 and 2015 in response to concerns that TFWs were displacing Canadians. Specifically, eligibility requirements were tightened to reduce the program’s attractiveness relative to domestic hiring. However, these restrictions were accompanied by measures to facilitate expeditious entry of foreign workers when labour shortages were clearly documented. Overall, this stick-and-carrot approach served to restrict program access by those abusing it while generating buy-in from employers who were using the program as intended (Lilly, forthcoming).
However, a second type of high-skilled temporary migration that has been subject to little public scrutiny has been the negotiation of temporary-entry chapters in free-trade agreements. They build on the GATS “mode four,” negotiated in the mid-1990s and, typically, temporary-entry chapters cover the free movement of professionals, business visitors, or senior management and specialist employees transferring within their companies (intra-corporate transferees) between signatory countries. Rules regarding duration of stay in the host country vary by country and type of worker. Normally, business visitors are entitled to short-duration stays (under three months), while intra-corporate transferees are often permitted to stay for several years. Canada’s GATS commitments are consistent with these norms, with business visitors and professionals limited to ninety-day stays under GATS, while intra-corporate transferees are limited to three years (WTO 2004). However, Canada offers preferential treatment to free-trade partners; in the eleven-country Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the duration of stay is six months for business visitors and three years for intra-corporate transferees, with extensions possible for both categories (Government of Canada 2016b).
One of the main factors that distinguishes temporary-entry provisions in trade agreements from sovereign TFW-visa programs described above is that economic needs tests used in the latter are bypassed in trade agreements. Such needs tests are considered discriminatory and protectionist barriers to trade, and are almost always precluded in the texts of temporary-entry chapters. Thus, under many trade agreements, workers who meet certain conditions are entitled to relocate between signatory countries for short periods irrespective of the host country’s labour-market conditions. Despite the obvious potential for trade agreements to displace workers or undercut wages, the negotiation and implementation of such chapters have largely escaped criticism.
How are these temporary-entry chapters working in practice? Are they achieving the trade gains envisioned when they were first developed? What benefit do they offer a country such as Canada, and can Canadian trade negotiators continue to rely on them with trade partners who have chosen to limit both their application and additional liberalization, such as the United States? Furthermore, should Canada continue to champion similar approaches to temporary entry with trade partners like China and India, whose populations dwarf Canada’s and whose objectives for labour mobility differ dramatically from those of traditional trading partners? This chapter attempts to address some of these questions.
In researching this work, it has become clear that there is a dearth of contemporary empirical evidence on these issues. Despite this, negotiators in Canada and elsewhere continue to pursue improved temporary-entry provisions with trade partners, largely based on assumptions and untested economic models from a previous, pre-digital century. Given trends of rapid growth of services over goods trade, this lack of research evidence to support current policy direction should be of concern. Thus, while this chapter responds to the questions articulated above, it also calls for critical reflection and empirical research on these issues. It proceeds as follows:
First, a brief review is offered on the current state of knowledge about temporary-entry provisions in Canadian and American trade agreements. Second, an overview is given of the reciprocity concept as a central pillar of Canada’s negotiating style, outlining its potential benefits and risks. Next, approaches used by countries with similar labour regimes and demographic challenges are explored, with examples from the European Union and Australia. Finally, policy recommendations are offered for how Canada might revise its strategy with new trade partners.
Existing Knowledge on Canadian Temporary-Entry Policy
The author’s previous research has examined the plurilateral twelve-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement to compare Canadian and American approaches to temporary-entry negotiations over time. That research has demonstrated that both countries approached temporary entry in similar ways during the 1980s and 1990s. The original Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) formed the basis for its replacement, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which included Mexico. The CUSFTA largely reflected GATS commitments, enabling temporary entry for business visitors, intra-company transferees, traders and investors, as well as nearly fifty professional occupations. With NAFTA, the chapter was made trilateral and the list of professionals was expanded to sixty-three. However, differences between the Canadian and US approaches existed even then, and the United States imposed a numerical cap on the number of Mexicans who could qualify for temporary entry during NAFTA’s first decade (Lilly 2019).
However, after this relatively open approach to temporary entry in the late twentieth century, the United States reversed its position and resisted further liberalization in new agreements. Other than NAFTA, only three US trade agreements contain any temporary-entry chapters: those with Jordan, Chile, and Singapore, all signed between 2000 and 2004. Jordan’s provisions were very restrictive and generally align with GATS; Chile and Singapore agreements contain hard caps on the number of workers who can enter the United States annually, of 1,400 and 5,400, respectively. Since then, the United States has refused to negotiate temporary entry with any new trade partners (Lilly 2019).
Canada, on the other hand, has continued to liberalize its temporary-entry commitments with most trading partners. Of the fifty-one countries that had trade agreements in force with Canada at the end of 2018, thirty-seven have preferential access to temporary entry that is equivalent to—or better than—NAFTA (Lilly 2019). For example, since signing trade agreements that largely pertain to the movement of different categories of workers, Canada has liberalized temporary entry for spouses and dependents of those workers in several agreements, including the CPTPP and the Canada-European Union Trade Agreement (CETA). This action is supported by research evidence, which demonstrates that the capacity to move family members to a destination country is an important factor in encouraging workers to relocate (Richardson 2016).
Why have these two trading partners and neighbours pursued such different approaches? Historical evidence in the United States reveals that its reversal was largely attributable to congressional concerns about sovereignty and the appropriateness of immigration measures in US trade agreements. The unanimous view of the US House Committee on the Judiciary charged with reviewing the Chile and Singapore trade agreements was that immigration measures were inappropriate for agreements subject to presidential trade-promotion authority (so-called fast-track legislation). The committee ultimately allowed the two agreements to proceed on the conditions that (1) numerical quotas are attached to visas granted through the deals (and subtracted from the United States’ existing 65,000 global commitment via GATS), and (2) temporary-entry chapters no longer be negotiated in US trade agreements (Lilly 2019). Until NAFTA’s 2018 renegotiation, when the original chapter was grandfathered into the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement text, that has remained the case.
Yet, while the reasons for American resistance are now well understood, Canada’s continuing commitment to liberalization has not been subject to examination. Perhaps this speaks to a lack of perceived need. American exceptionalism is a luxury Canada cannot afford. Several other countries have also continued to liberalize temporary entry, including Australia, which has a similar immigration-policy framework to Canada’s. In addition, Canada’s broader demographic challenges suggest that temporary-entry chapters could be an effective tool for addressing labour shortages (WTO 2004). Small employers and major business associations alike prioritize temporary entry above many issues in trade negotiations. Modernizing NAFTA’s temporary-entry chapter was a top priority for private-sector groups, including the Business Council of Canada (2017) and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (2017). Corporations generally support temporary-entry chapters, arguing that the relocation of workers is necessary to implement and realize trade-agreement preferences, and could also open new avenues for further trade liberalization (WTO 2004).
However, labour and civil-society groups in developed countries such as Canada generally oppose temporary-entry programs due to concerns about wage depression and displacement of local workers. Thus, it is worthwhile asking whether the temporary-entry chapters that Canada is negotiating reflect the interests of its workers or whether it is simply negotiating them in response to business requests. The next section investigates the extent to which the tradition of reciprocity as a key pillar of Canadian trade negotiations is contributing to these issues.
The Central Role of Reciprocity in Canada’s Approach
Reciprocity is a core concept in international law. Keohane (1986, 8) defines reciprocity as “exchanges of roughly equivalent values in which the actions of each party are contingent on the prior actions of the others in such a way that good is returned for good, and bad for bad.” Reciprocity is used broadly in international trade negotiations to legitimize trade concessions as gains for participating states.
Yet as Keohane observed, reciprocity implies a certain balance of power between states that does not exist in reality. Powerful states with large markets can simply wipe out the competition in small countries. It is due to this power imbalance that small and developing states generally have greater concerns about offering reciprocal tariff reductions to larger, more powerful trading partners. While extending and assessing reciprocity’s value can be difficult enough in bilateral negotiations, free-ridership incentives increase dramatically in multilateral negotiations. For this reason, rules-oriented states, irrespective of size, who willingly implement their trade obligations have their own concerns about extending reciprocity to partners whose commitment to rules-bound action may be in doubt (Keohane 1986).
Reciprocity can become a fraught concept when applied to temporary entry due to the different incentives facing various states. Developing countries with large populations, such as India and China, have active programs in place to facilitate the export of human capital to developed countries to encourage development via remittance income and a long-term plan to re-shore skills and investment by their diaspora (WTO 2004; Chacko 2007). Meanwhile, citizens of developed countries prize high-skilled, well-paying jobs. Insofar as they have any control over job supply and creation, their governments are incentivized to protect local wages and jobs through immigration controls. Thus, developing and developed countries negotiating temporary-entry provisions can find their objectives mismatched and their usual rhetorical positions on the importance of reciprocity reversed. For example, India has recently led efforts to gain greater commitments on labour mobility from developed countries through the WTO, while European and North American countries have responded with deep caution (WTO 2019).
Even so, Canada has used reciprocity as a key principle in negotiating temporary-entry commitments, most recently in the CPTPP. During those negotiations, Canada explicitly stated its intention to extend reciprocal commitments to all states that made offers, regardless of the varying benefits that could accrue to Canada (Global Affairs Canada 2019).
As Keohane (1986) notes, reciprocity in trade negotiations seeks to achieve a rough level of “equivalence” or balanced benefits for both parties; however, the measurement of benefits is difficult, especially when tariffs on goods are not the focus. The accurate measurement of benefits offered by temporary-entry commitments presents a nearly impossible task. Given that preferential rights of entry to a foreign country can offer a range of indirect economic benefits beyond those tied directly to the job itself—often depending on its level of development and quality of life—it is unlikely that trade negotiators accurately evaluate these benefits in assessing equivalence.
But if advanced estimation methods for valuing temporary entry are impossible, modest methods offer a blunt indicator. A simple count of the number of workers entering each country under a trade agreement and a rough estimate of wages earned offer indications of the value that temporary-entry benefits offer each trade partner. Also, the number of temporary-entry positions linked to new foreign direct investment or the establishment of a foreign commercial presence also offer important indicators about the value of these chapters. However, Canada does not perform this type of analysis systematically to evaluate possible trade gains associated with temporary-entry chapters. It is not alone. Despite that GATS mode-four provisions have existed since the late 1990s, there is almost no empirical work on the economic value of this type of trade liberalization globally. The handful of evaluations that do exist use estimates dating back to the early 2000s (Walmsley and Winters 2005).
Perhaps the reason Canada has not undertaken systematic evaluations of economic benefits offered by temporary-entry provisions is that—to date—trade agreements have not been widely used by foreign workers for entering Canada. Each year, only about 20,000 workers arrive via Canada’s trade agreements, with 90 percent under NAFTA provisions alone (Lilly, forthcoming). There are numerous other pathways for entry that offer greater benefits to foreign nationals (length of stay, conditions of entry) than temporary entry. However, although the temporary nature of relocation is often upheld as a reason for countries not to be overly concerned about such valuations, some temporary-entry provisions can allow workers to relocate relatively permanently, suggesting this sidesteps the problem (WTO 2004).
Of greater concern is the possibility that lack of scrutiny of the relative valuation of reciprocal temporary-entry measures stems from the type of countries that Canada has negotiated with historically: overwhelmingly developed states with similar labour-market conditions. Thus, perhaps there has been an assumed level of benefit to Canada hardwired into the agreements because of the similarity of trade partners. If so, such assumptions must be challenged when considering trade negotiations with dramatically different countries, such as India.
Finally, there is evidence to suggest that there were far more Canadians working in the United States under NAFTA commitments than vice versa. While it is estimated that as many as 30,000 to 40,000 Canadians were present in the United States on NAFTA visas at any one time (Lilly 2019), less than half that number entered Canada from NAFTA countries using the same provisions (Lilly, forthcoming). That Canada did not publish such figures may have been to obscure the disproportionate benefit that Canadians accrued from NAFTA’s temporary-entry chapter relative to the United States.
Should Reciprocity Still Apply to Future Negotiations?
As Canada considers moving forward with new trade partners, the playing field looks dramatically different and reciprocity of equivalence can no longer be assumed in the area of temporary entry. For example, India has an ambitious plan to gain greater access to labour markets in Western countries via bilateral and multilateral arrangements (Delegation of India to the WTO 2016). In the United States, the H-1B visa program has been overwhelmed by high-tech workers from India, with more than 150,000 H-1B visas and intra-corporate transferee visas going to Indian nationals in 2016 alone (Lilly 2019). Though comparable statistics for Americans seeking to move to India via temporary-entry provisions are not available, it is certainly a fraction of that number.
Should Canada wish to proceed with negotiating temporary-entry commitments with India or similar countries, greater attention to eligibility requirements for entry to Canada is required. For example, most temporary-entry chapters in trade agreements allow “specialists” who have been employed by the company for a year or more to qualify as intra-corporate transferees. Yet the definition of “specialist” varies considerably between trade agreements and partners. Table 7.1 provides examples of the definitions used by Canada, the European Union, and Australia in recent trade agreements.
Table 7.1. Definition of “Specialist” Category of Intra-Corporate Transferee
Canada (CPTPP TEXT) | European Union (Vietnam text) | Australia (China text) |
Specialist means an employee possessing specialised knowledge of the company’s products or services and their application in international markets, or an advanced level of expertise or knowledge of the company’s processes and procedures. (Government of Canada 2016b) |
"Specialists" means natural persons working within a juridical person possessing specialised knowledge essential to the establishments’ areas of activity, techniques or management; in assessing such knowledge, account shall be taken not only of knowledge specific to the establishment, but also of whether the person has a high level of qualification including adequate professional experience referring to a type of work or activity requiring specific technical knowledge, including possible membership of an accredited profession. (European Union 2018, 28) |
A specialist, who is a natural person with advanced trade, technical or professional skills and experience who must be assessed as having the necessary qualifications, or alternative credentials accepted as meeting Australia’s standards, for that occupation, and who must have been employed by the employer for not less than two years immediately preceding the date of the application for temporary entry. (Australian Government 2015, 117) |
Note: Emphasis added.
Language such as Canada’s is highly vulnerable to abuse since its definition of “specialized knowledge” can mean almost anything, including simply possessing knowledge of an employer’s proprietary systems. Since much service work is performed on proprietary systems (e.g., expense reimbursement or supplier contracts), it is easy to envision how Canada’s “specialist” category of intra-corporate transferee can be vulnerable to abuse. This would become a problem if a trade agreement enabled foreign nationals to relocate to Canada to undertake work that Canadians could otherwise perform with basic training. Unlike Canada’s TFW program that first requires satisfaction of an economic needs tests to identify labour shortages before granting visas, trade-agreement provisions would not allow the Canadian government to consider domestic labour-market conditions before granting admission to foreign workers. Since wages in India are much lower, and Canada’s definition of “specialist” does not require assessment of qualifications, opportunities for abuse are high.
This danger is not merely hypothetical. Canada has already had a close encounter with the potential for this type of misuse during the Royal Bank of Canada’s outsourcing scandal in 2013 (Tomlinson 2013). In that case, workers from India with ill-defined skill sets were brought to Canada under the TFW program to receive training from Canadians whose jobs would ultimately be terminated, their positions offshored to India. The bank’s plan to displace local workers violated TFW program rules and should not have been permitted. Still, the scandal sparked the Harper government’s overhaul of the program to increase enforcement and penalties (Tomlinson 2013; Lilly, forthcoming). If a Canada-India trade agreement containing a typical temporary-entry chapter had been in effect in 2013, detecting the abuse and imposing penalties would have been more difficult. Furthermore, receiving countries that have foregone the right to apply economic needs tests to such migration would have less recourse to confront the violation under trade agreements. For example, although individual cases of rejection for temporary entry are not subject to the CPTPP’s dispute-settlement mechanism, a party can bring a claim if there is a “pattern of practice” to rejections by another party (Government of Canada 2016a). Hence, future policy action to close loopholes inherent in the agreement’s language could be subject to dispute settlement.
Despite these risks, temporary-entry provisions need not be worded so loosely as to undermine a country’s domestic labour-market interests. Table 7.1 above also demonstrates that other countries use language more precise than Canada’s in their definitions of “specialists.” The European Union text with Vietnam (and with Canada via CETA) indicates that specialists must possess knowledge “essential” to the company, and that this knowledge can be subject to assessment according to qualifications, experience, and even membership in a credentialing body (European Union 2018, 28). Australia’s text with China is even more restrictive, calling for qualifications equivalent to those of Australia. It also requires specialists to have been employed by the company for at least two years, despite the global standard of one year (Australian Government 2015). These examples suggest that both the European Union and Australia have a more nuanced understanding of the vulnerabilities inherent in GATS-era language when applied to twenty-first-century realities surrounding labour mobility.
Is Canada naive in its insistence on using the reciprocity principle when negotiating temporary entry? Or should Canada revisit its playbook when negotiating with developing countries such as India, given the very different goals and issues at play? Based on the examples above, the answer to the first question is no and to the second is yes. Both the European Union and Australia have applied standard temporary-entry provisions in their negotiations with developing countries on a reciprocal basis. However, they also used carefully worded language that anticipates the potential for foreign entrants from those countries to depress wages or displace local workers if implementation is not carefully managed. It is also noteworthy that the Australian Labor Party, in opposition when a trade agreement with China was negotiated, called for wage-parity requirements and safeguard measures to ensure that Australian workers would not be displaced by the chapter’s provisions (Shorten 2015; Armstrong 2017). Canada should consider these types of measures if it proceeds to negotiate agreements with countries such as India.
However, abandonment of reciprocity as a core negotiating principle is impossible for a middle power such as Canada that lacks the geopolitical power and market influence to negotiate unilaterally advantageous outcomes with major economies. When considering the overall value of a temporary-entry chapter with India, decision makers must consider the concept of equivalence as it relates to reciprocity. Although many thousands of Indian nationals may be interested in relocating to Canada via temporary-entry provisions, there is less interest among most Canadians to relocate there. Of course, this may change as Indian cities such as Bangalore and Hyderabad emerge as global high-tech players, attracting foreigners and members of the Indian diaspora to return (Chacko 2007).
Still, the Indian government maintains much stronger interests in enabling its workers to relocate to countries like Canada temporarily, since remittances and long-term repatriation of intellectual property are key components of its global strategy (WTO 2004; Delegation of India to the WTO 2016). If empirical research on reverse migration trends from the United States to India can be extended to Canada, it is more likely that Canadians relocating to India would be motivated to move permanently, reducing the economic value of temporary-entry chapters for Canada (Chacko 2007). Of course, when temporary entry is assessed as a mechanism to encourage foreign direct investment and greater bilateral trade, Canada could have greater interest in such negotiations. Nevertheless, Canada must become more sophisticated at estimating the value of such chapters to adequately address such questions. Furthermore, if there is sufficient benefit in the overall trade agreement to justify extending temporary-entry provisions to Indian nationals, Canada must ensure that India “pays” elsewhere in the agreement via other concessions. It would be indefensible for Canada to simply extend reciprocal provisions within the chapter without linking them to its other offensive interests. Indeed, disagreement over India’s ambitions for temporary entry is thought to be a substantive reason that trade negotiations with Canada have failed to advance.
Moving Forward with Sword and Shield
Temporary entry is different from immigration in many ways. It is due in part to these differences that temporary-entry provisions have been advanced through international trade negotiations. In trade policy, restrictions on migration are considered barriers to trade and have been estimated as costly for the free flow of goods and services (Walmsley and Winters 2005). As such, provisions to reduce restrictions on temporary entry have been incorporated in many international trade agreements.
However, it is only because temporary entry is considered distinct from immigration that Western countries have pursued such provisions in trade agreements. The potential for trade agreements to become targets of populist backlash rises if temporary-entry provisions undermine local labour markets or become back-door pathways for immigration that disadvantage local workers. The United States serves as an extreme case of discomfort among lawmakers of surrendering any aspect of border sovereignty to foreign trade partners. Congressional records indicate that such anxiety long predates the Trump administration.
For these reasons, and due to the linkages often made between populism, protectionism, and anti-immigration sentiment by some leaders, including President Trump, today’s trade negotiators must not be naive about the potential for misuse of temporary-entry provisions in modern trade agreements. Highly populated developing countries such as India have more incentives to find multiple policy avenues to enable their citizens to pursue work opportunities abroad. And while the labour markets of sparsely populated countries such as Canada can certainly benefit from India’s excess labour supply, maintaining popular support for immigration in Canada relies on careful implementation of rules and their underlying policy objectives. In such a context, it is imperative that temporary-entry provisions remain limited in scope, facilitating only the types of labour movement needed to successfully implement the trade agreements in which they are found. As mentioned, Canada has many avenues for legal, permanent immigration that foreign workers who wish to relocate permanently can explore.
Finally, although this chapter was largely completed prior to the COVID-19 crisis, it is necessary to acknowledge that the pandemic is likely to have enduring impacts on high-skilled labour mobility moving forward. Although difficult to predict, policy priorities around the negotiation of temporary entry chapters will likely change as governments and employers reckon with the long-term consequences of the pandemic for domestic labour forces, health risks stemming from international travel, and the implications of permanent work-from-home policies in some sectors of the economy.
To ensure temporary-entry chapters are meeting Canada’s national interests, and to safeguard its temporary-entry chapters from abuse, Canada can undertake a few simple measures.
•First, it must undertake more rigorous analysis on the economic value to Canada of temporary-entry chapters, which will vary according to trade partner. Limits to reciprocal provisions within those chapters cannot be assumed, particularly when Canada negotiates with highly populated developing countries. Analysis must consider the incentives workers from both parties face in relocating to the other country, and the opportunities for foreign direct investment that could be facilitated by temporary entry.
•In all future trade agreements, Canada should revise its chapter text to align more closely with those of countries with similar labour market and demographic profiles. Examples include introducing greater restrictions on language surrounding the entry of so-called specialists to align more closely with Australian or European Union agreements. In addition, a variety of stakeholders, including labour groups, should be consulted on appropriate language. The preferences of private-sector employers may not serve the interests of Canadian workers, who may have different incentives concerning wages and working conditions.
•Canadian policy-makers should be careful in advancing negotiations with countries with very different labour-market regimes, and consider introducing safeguard measures to anticipate—and avoid—abuse. At a minimum, these provisions should include requirements governing necessary qualifications and requirements for wage parity for foreign workers granted entry. Measures could even impose numerical caps, as the United States did with Singapore and Chile (Lilly 2019).
•For high-risk, controversial negotiations, Canada could also consider a time-limited implementation window, after which the chapter will be reviewed and reconsidered. A less adversarial path could be the insertion of so-called snap-back provisions, whereby preferential treatment on temporary entry is removed if the chapter is violated (Lilly 2019).
•Regardless of time limitations or snap-back provisions, parties should review the implementation regularly, at least every five years. For example, the CPTPP chapter requires parties to meet every three years to review implementation. However, its language privileges further liberalization measures over addressing disputes that may arise (Government of Canada 2016a). Canadian governments should routinely collect statistics to measure wages and flows of workers between member countries to inform this exercise and future policy directions.
Temporary-entry provisions offer an important instrument to ensure the smooth implementation of trade agreements between partners. However, in the current context of populist-fuelled anti-globalization sentiment, they should remain limited in scope. As Canada considers advancing new agreements with other trade partners, it should proceed carefully and safeguard the integrity of its temporary-entry chapters. In this way, Canada can ensure its approach can serve as a shield, and not just a sword.
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1The author gratefully acknowledges research funding support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.