Canada Is About to Sign the Pacific Trade Deal. What next?

Later this week, the 12 countries that make up the Trans Pacific Partnership, a massive global trade deal that includes Canada, the United States and Japan, will gather in New Zealand to formally sign the agreement.

Signing the TPP is a major step forward for the controversial treaty, but questions still abound over whether it will be ratified and take effect.

While the Liberal government has been cautious about expressing its support – International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland has been consistent in calling for consultation not conclusions – the decision to sign the TPP was never much in doubt. The agreement contains incentives to be an “original signatory,” since only those countries qualify for the rules related to entry into force of the agreement.

To stay on the sidelines at this early stage might have kept Canada out of the TPP for good.

Moreover, as Freeland emphasized in a public letter released this week, signing a treaty does not create binding legal obligations. Indeed, Canada has a fair number of international treaties that it has signed but not ratified, including a 1988 Convention on International Bills of Exchange and International Promissory notes. The same is true for the United States, which has signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, but has not ratified it.