Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has cancelled a trip to Brussels, as Belgium failed on Wednesday to clear internal opposition to the EU-Canada free-trade pact (Ceta). "Canada remains ready to sign this important agreement when Europe is ready," Alex Lawrence, the spokesperson for Canada’s International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, told German news agency DPA.
Ceta, the trade agreement between Eu and Canada, could go in flame. Today, International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland’s efforts to convince the holdout Belgian region of Wallonia to agree to the European Union’s wide-ranging free trade deal with Canada have ended without a resolution.
All 28 EU governments support the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), but Belgium cannot give assent without backing from five sub-federal administrations and French-speaking Wallonia has steadfastly opposed it. Wallonia counts about 3.5 million people, less than 1% of the 507 million Europeans CETA would affect. The deal aims to eliminate 98% of tariffs between Canada and EU.
BlackBerry, the canadian firm that invented the smartphone, stops making mobil phones, John Chen, BlackBerry executive chairman and CEO, said Wedsneday.
The new strategy will enable Blackberry to “focus all of our efforts on where we can deliver differentiation in software and security” which is “aligned with where the market is going,” CEO John Chen said as the company released Q2 earnings.
General Motors and Unifor, the Canadian trade union of workers in the sector, reached an agreement that averted a strike that would lead to blocking of some of the Canadian facilities of the company.
The deal, which will be subject to a ratification vote on Sunday, provides that Oshawa’s assembly plant will remain open, that it’s focused on sedans that come out of production in 2019 and GM is committed to investing "hundreds of millions of dollars" in a restructuring program to allow the assembly also of other product categories.
