Whoopsie – During a debriefing session between Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, Canadian politicians and business leaders, the chief NAFTA negotiator for Canada Steve Verheul accidentally told the group, while cameras were rolling, there were no actual NAFTA negotiations taking place.
When a seemingly shocked participant then asked a follow-up question about how could Steve Verheul reconcile that admission against earlier statements about an upcoming Memo of Understanding (MOU), Ms. Freeland quickly shut down the discussion -in french- until the cameras left the meeting. [Watch Video Segment Here]
Council Question: “Do you still meet your counterparts? Do you still have committees that are working? What is the status of the negotiations?
Steve Verheul: “We don’t have any active negotiations. I haven’t talked to them in a little while.”
Council Question: “Since, …since?”
Steve Verheul: “Two or three weeks. Um, I’ll have the odd conversation, but no real engagement, no real negotiation session.”
Council Question: “And when we hear that you were close to a kind of MOU [Memo of Understanding] what was the basis of that?”
Chrystia Freeland: awkward interruption in French. (watch below)
What became evident within the exchange is the Canadian government trying to hide the lack of NAFTA progress from concerned citizens inside Canada. In essence, the Canadian government is lying to their citizens about the possibility of a NAFTA agreement.
The Canadian economy contracting. Last month the Canadian economy dropped 31,000 full-time jobs. Amid an economy one-tenth the size of the U.S, that would be a comparative single-month job loss of 310,000 in the United States.
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