ABSTRACT
Successive Canadian governments, in attempting to diversify Canada's external trade portfolio beyond the dominating two-way trade flows with its southern neighbor, have sought to cultivate deeper trade relations with other trade partners in order to increase its export revenue. Such an effort has moderately succeeded over the past ten years in this objective – while the United States continues to be the main destination for Canadian exports, its relative importance in comparison to other trade partners has been slightly declining every year, according to Industry Canada's online trade data. The EU is Canada's second most important trading partner, with exports in goods and services totaling over $55 billion CAD in 2008 (European Commission 2010) A number of bilateral agreements over the history of this trade relationship have been designed to facilitate trade by eliminating both tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. Recently, the 2009 EU–Canada Summit announced that the two partners intended to launch negotiations for a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Since this announcement, several rounds of negotiations have taken place in 2010, with more planned throughout 2011. Despite the advances in efforts to deepen the trade relationship between the two trade partners, according to Industry Canada's online trade data, as of 2009, the EU as a percentage share of total trade has not been increasing as quickly as trade with Canada's other partners, such as Brazil, China and India.
