Statements of Canada - General Council – February 18-19, 2025

2. Practical Steps to Enhance the Process for the Appointment of Officers to Certain WTO Bodies – Communication from Canada, Chile, Jamaica, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Singapore and Switzerland (WT/GC/W/950/Rev.6)

Concluding remarks:

• Thank you all. We are very pleased with the level of support we have received for this proposal.
• We have worked hard to come up with a decision that addresses concerns and comments we have heard and that will be useful to support the health of the WTO.
• We were disappointed we were not able to reach a decision today.
• Cosponsors are determined to take this good work and what we have heard from members forward.

4. Incorporation of the Agreement on Electronic Commerce into Annex 4 of the WTO Agreement – Draft Decision (WT/GC/W/963)

• We wish to thank the co-convenors for their tireless efforts and recognize the hard work over the past five years that has brought us to this point today.
• Canada welcomes the JSI as a concrete step forward in WTO rulemaking on digital trade, providing greater certainty for businesses and consumers in the digital economy.
• We greatly value the participation of developing country members. The diversity of members is reflective of the universal importance of the digital sector, and the value of bringing these disciplines under the WTO.
• To give a sense of scale, the World Economic Forum estimates that 70% of new value created up to 2030 will be based on digitally-enabled platform business models.
• The WTO has an important role to play in establishing a set of global trade rules to underpin the digital economy and harness its innovative and commercial potential to benefit all of our economies and societies.
• JSI participants have taken this role seriously and have worked hard for years to reach the point of developing the first set of global trade rules in this area.
• The agreement establishes a more open, transparent and predictable global digital trading framework in which businesses and consumers can operate.
• Having a framework of rules in place will help ensure the WTO remains relevant and fit-for-purpose in a dynamic global economy.

5. Report by the Chairperson of the Trade Negotiations Committee and Report by the Director-General

• Thank you, DG, for these updates, and for the hard work and patience you’ve dedicated to moving this organization forward.
• Thank you to colleagues for your continued engagement in negotiations, in the ongoing work of this organization and in our efforts to reform it.
• I’d like to spend a minute reminding this Council of the real-world importance of the WTO and the value that it has provided in promoting stable and predictable global markets.
• I will repeat a few points that I made at the most recent CoA-SS meeting because I believe they are worth repeating as they apply across the board and not just to agriculture.
• In 1996, 18 months after the founding of the WTO, the then Director General, Renato Ruggiero, delivered a lecture in Ottawa entitled: “The road ahead: international trade policy in the era of the WTO”. In it, he noted that:
• “Globalization will not go away. Policy-makers could not stop the process, even if they wanted to. It is not something which is optional, but a part of our normal everyday life in countless ways…. Internationally, the choice is whether this inevitable process will take place within a system based on agreed rules or simply on power. In the post-war period we have generally tried to follow the first alternative. To abandon it now would change the economic - and possibly political - history of the world in a dangerous way for all its people.”
• Those words ring as true today as they did 30 years ago.
• As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the WTO, I can assure you that Canada will remain among the most reform-oriented Members of this organization.
• We will make it our utmost priority to consolidate the progress we have made and to continue to improve the WTO and its rules.
• We should not give in to protectionist pressures.
• Thank you, Chair.