Canada Welcomes Launch of Negotiations on WTO Environmental Goods Agreement

The Honourable Ed Fast, Minister of International Trade, ...announced that Canada along with 13 other World Trade Organization members, including China, the European Union, Japan and the United States, are launching negotiations toward a new WTO plurilateral agreement on environmental goods. The first round of negotiations ...[took] place on July 9 and 10, 2014, in Geneva, Switzerland...[Negotiations focused on eliminating tariffs or customs duties on a broad range of environmental goods.]

An agreement on environmental goods would give Canadian companies—already leaders in the sustainable-technologies industry—a significant commercial advantage in exporting a broad range of environmental products, such as equipment used in the production of renewable energy, air-handling equipment, water treatment technologies and waste management and recycling equipment...

This has been excerpted from 8 July 2014 news release by Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, and is available in its entirety at Canada.ca.