OTTAWA, March 13 — The Canadian Parliament has agreed to rush through ratification of the new US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade pact and should be finished by later today, a senior government official said.
Canada is the last of the three signatories to formally adopt the pact.
The House of Commons lower chamber, which had weeks of deliberations left, agreed the instant approval on Friday as part of measures to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
Pablo Rodriguez, responsible for pushing the government’s agenda through the House, said the upper Senate chamber would most likely vote to back the pact later in the day.
The only remaining step would then be formal approval by the Governor-General — the representative of Queen Elizabeth, Canada’s head of state — which is a formality.
The USMCA was designed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, which US President Donald Trump strongly opposed on the grounds it had cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs. — Reuters
