On March 2-3, 2006, a group of leading observers of the international trade and investment scene gathered in Ottawa for an informal discussion of the prospects for the Doha Development Agenda in view of the progress in negotiations made at the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade...

On February 17-18, 2005, the Centre for International Governance Innovation at the University of Waterloo and the International Development Research Centre, in co-ordination with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade convened an informal meeting of leading observers of the...

On March 13-14, 2003, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade convened an informal meeting of leading observers of international trade and investment to discuss prospects for the Doha Development Agenda. This paper represents a thematic summary of those discussions, which were...

The WTO as we know it – version 1.0 – was created for an industrial economy with an overlay of a knowledge-based economy that is now being transformed into a data-driven economy. The content of WTO rules for this new digital economy promises to be very different what is in place now. Not...

Canada is at an historic juncture with regard to trade policy, deciding on ratification of the Canada-EU and Trans-Pacific Partnership agreements, having seen the multilateral option effectively removed at the WTO Ministerial at Nairobi in 2015, and facing constraints in making additional...

The Doha climate change conference failed to deliver a credible agreement on climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations has stalled, to all appearances indefinitely, leaving unresolved the multilateral talks on how to reconcile and integrate...

The rules-based framework developed for trade and investment under the technological conditions of the industrial era, as instantiated in the current set of rules established under the World Trade Organization (WTO), is not equipped to address the issues and mediate the tensions that are...

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements in recent years has reenergized a long-standing debate over their benefits and costs. This paper argues that a balanced view is in order. The trade creating effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) are likely to fall off sharply with increasing...