Minister Ng hosts final Ottawa Group meeting of 2021

News release

December 16, 2021 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada

A rules-based multilateral trading system, with the WTO at its core, is essential to ensuring a sustainable and inclusive global economic recovery.

Today, the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development, hosted the last Ottawa Group meeting for 2021, at which members, attending virtually, reaffirmed their commitment to advancing work on WTO reform issues.  

The group agreed to keep up its momentum and support ambitious outcomes on key priorities ahead of the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), which was recently postponed because of developments in the COVID-19 pandemic and will be rescheduled in due course.  In particular, Minister Ng and her Ottawa Group partners committed to achieving strong outcomes on trade and health and fisheries subsidies negotiations.  The Ottawa Group has been a leader in advancing a trade and health declaration and has broadened support for the declaration to include 58 WTO members that together represent more than 60% of world trade in essential medical goods. 

At the meeting, Minister Ng and her counterparts took note of a significant achievement in negotiations for the Joint Statement Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation: On December 2, Canada and 66 other WTO members endorsed a joint ministerial statement confirming the conclusion of the negotiations. This was the first WTO outcome on services in more than 20 years and will help ensure more predictability for Canadian services suppliers, particularly micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, and contribute to jobs and economic growth worldwide. The addition of a provision on gender non-discrimination was also a key step forward in ensuring that everyone, including women, can benefit from trade. Minister Ng and her Ottawa Group counterparts also committed to continuing collaboration on key WTO reform priorities, including finding a solution to the dispute settlement body impasse, improving transparency and monitoring at the WTO, and advancing work on issues, such as trade and environment, trade and gender, and agriculture.  

Quotes

“As chair of the Ottawa Group, Canada is committed to leading on initiatives that strengthen the rules-based multilateral trading system with the WTO front and centre. Today’s Ottawa Group meeting was an opportunity to take stock of our progress on key initiatives and reaffirm our commitment to keep the momentum to advance our work on WTO reform to support a strong, sustainable, and inclusive global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

- Mary Ng, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development

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Contacts

Alice Hansen
Press Secretary
Office of the Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development
613-612-0482
Alice.Hansen@international.gc.ca

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