Canada's Chief Negotiator Explains What Went Wrong, Which Is Mostly That The Other Side Kept Changing Rooms
Canada's chief trade negotiator has offered a post-mortem on the collapsed talks with Washington, and the account is remarkable mostly for its calm. There were no theatrics. There was a timeline. There were, apparently, several agreements that existed for periods of between four hours and a long weekend.
The pattern described is familiar to anyone who has tried to book a contractor. Terms were settled at the officials' level, then revised at the ministerial level, then revised again by a social media post published at 11:40 p.m. Eastern. Canadian officials would arrive with the previous version highlighted in yellow. The Americans would arrive with a new version and a genuine belief that this had always been the version.
The most Canadian detail is that our side kept preparing. Briefing binders were updated. Sectoral annexes on softwood and dairy were refreshed at considerable expense. Somebody in Global Affairs maintained a spreadsheet tracking which concessions had been offered, withdrawn, and offered again, a document now understood to be the single most complete record of the negotiation anywhere on Earth, including in Washington.
The negotiator's assessment, translated out of diplomatic language, is that you cannot close a deal with a counterparty who does not experience the passage of time. That is not a Canadian failure. That is a physics problem.
The official recommendation is patience and preparation. The unofficial one, offered by a departmental staffer holding a cold coffee, was simpler.
"We didn't lose the negotiation," she said. "We're just the only ones who took notes."