Farmscape for December 13, 2019

The Vice-President of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute expects the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to be ratified by all three countries by late spring or early summer.
Earlier this week, with the support of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, an agreement was reached which will move forward U.S. ratification of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
The modified USMCA is expected to be approved by the House by year's end before moving on to the Senate where it will be dealt with in January-February and then on to the President.
Colin Robertson, the Vice President and a Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, acknowledges, because there have been several changes to agreement, the amended deal will still need to be approved by the governments in all three countries.

Clip-Colin Robertson-Canadian Global Affairs Institute:
In Mexico they had ratified and the President had signed off on the legislation earlier this year but, because this results in significant change to that which the Mexicans have passed, they too will have to pass amendments to the legislation they passed earlier this year.
In the case of Canada we had introduced legislation based on the original NAFTA in June but, because we have a new Parliament, we were going to have to re-introduce the legislation in any event.
Now the legislation will be introduced likely the end of January early February and will be considered in our minority Parliament.
My sense is that it will pass pretty quickly in the Canadian Parliament because almost all of the Premiers are on side with this and I think there'll be enough Conservatives who see this as being advantageous.
I'm not sure where the Greens will be or the NDP.
The NDP will likely vote against as they usually do against trade agreements and the Bloc, I'm not sure where they'll be.

Robertson anticipates the agreement will be ratified in all three countries by early spring to early summer at which point it will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement which remains in effect.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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