How do the FTAA services negotiations help Canada?
• Canada’s economy is increasingly driven by a dynamic services sector which includes a number of knowledge-intensive industries. Canadians excel in providing sophisticated services and are global leaders in telecommunications, aerospace, computer services, biotechnology, environmental technology and many other sectors of the new economy. • The FTAA negotiations on services will help Canadians by removing market access barriers that Canadian exporters face in the Western hemisphere. • Canada’s services exports to FTAA countries, excluding the U.S. and Mexico, are growing fast (average annual rate of 7.6%) and totalled $3.9 billion in 2003. Commercial services were responsible for the bulk of these gains and reached $2.0 billion in 2003. • Once completed, the FTAA would be the world’s largest free trade area.
