From the outside, it looked like yet another bilateral meeting between Justin Trudeau and his continental ally, Enrique Pena Nieto. But this time, the Canadian prime minister had a somewhat atypical agenda for his face-to-face chat with the Mexican president.
From the outside, it looked like yet another bilateral meeting between Justin Trudeau and his continental ally, Enrique Pena Nieto, on the sidelines of yet another leaders’ summit.
But this time, the Canadian prime minister had a somewhat atypical agenda for his face-to-face chat with the Mexican president.
Trudeau and Pena Nieto, who have built a good relationship in NAFTA’s negotiating trenches, gripped hands and exchanged warm greetings inside the meeting room.
It was the Canadian leader’s first bilateral meeting on the margins of this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit at a palm-lined, seaside resort in Vietnam. The Canadian team had planned it that way.
A key topic of discussion, as they sank into the yellow cushions on their chairs, focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) trade talks.
Heading into APEC, a senior Canadian government official said Ottawa had been anticipating pressure from TPP partners Japan and Australia, two countries that wanted to move forward quickly with sealing the 11-country deal.
The Trudeau government, on the other hand, wanted to throw some sand in the gears. Ottawa had been pushing the other parties to make changes to how the treaty would affect areas like culture, intellectual property and the auto sector.
« We were not going to be rushed into a deal, » Trudeau told reporters at his closing APEC news conference on Saturday, echoing warnings he had issued repeatedly over the course of the week.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, provided a peek behind the scenes of what followed during the TPP talks in Danang.
The Canadian team had no plans to agree to the deal at Friday’s TPP leaders’ meeting unless the modifications were made. And they knew they had some allies. They had also been informed about unease about the deal among a few of the other countries.
