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Royal Bank of Canada has postponed a trader day that planned to discuss the recent purchase of Los Angeles-based City National Bank, following a death of the U.S. private and commercial bank’s chairman emeritus and board member Bram Goldsmith.

Goldsmith, who was 93, died on Sunday. He’d served as chief executive of City National from 1975 to 1995.

Royal Bank had scheduled the investor day for analysts and shareholders to take place this Friday in Toronto.

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“Bram was accountable for building City National into one of the most highly-respected and trusted banking franchises within the U.S.,” Dave McKay, RBC’s leader, said inside a statement late Monday.

McKay added that Goldsmith’s resolve for serving clients and the community was “demonstrated every single day as he continued to operate tirelessly as chairman emeritus and a person in the board.”

Goldsmith was first elected to City National’s board in 1964. He was the chairman from 1975 to 2013 and chairman and chief executive officer from 1975 to 1995.

Royal Bank acquired City National for $5 billion this past year, the biggest takeover in the Canadian bank’s history. A brand new date will be set for the investor day shortly, the financial institution said in the statement.

Many alternatives regarding the way forward for troubled Bombardier Inc. happen to be proposed. The Quebec government has already committed $1.3 billion in aid and today some type of moral argument has been levelled at Ottawa to throw money into Bombardier’s cap also. This is a horrible idea from a governance perspective, in addition to a taxpayer perspective.

Let’s be clear about Bombardier’s governance reality: The Bombardier/Beaudoin families hold almost 60 per cent of voting power within the corporation, despite holding a fiscal interest of just one-quarter of this figure. This can be a dual-class-share firm that simply isn’t flying.

A federal bailout would place perhaps a billion or even more taxpayer dollars in the hands of family that is insulated from governance accountability because of the corporate structure that it has chosen. This insulation and insufficient accountability have not been good for the organization. Over the past 5 years, Bombardier’s stock price has declined a lot more than 75 percent. Why should Canadian taxpayers be on the hook for Bombardier’s poor corporate governance?

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Dual-class share structures are fundamentally unfair: They leave the subordinate shareholders unprotected and cry out for a response from securities regulators. Advocates of such structures recall success stories – like Fairfax or Onex – without focusing on the point that dual-class-share structures undermine corporate governance standards since the subordinate shareholders are burdened with a disproportionate share from the economic risk within the firm relative to remarkable ability to help the affairs of the corporation. In particular, they cannot elect directors or otherwise ensure change through their vote.

As the Magna buyout showed, and also the Corus/Shaw deal suggests, dual-class structures can have severe consequences especially when there aren’t any legally mandated procedural safeguards relating to special committees, valuations, fairness opinions and voting conditions. Because the jurisdiction of securities regulators draws on investor protection and also the public interest, dual-class-share structures ought to be further regulated, otherwise prohibited, in capital markets.

From Ottawa’s perspective, if Bombardier were to receive federal funding, there are no accountability mechanisms in place to make sure that the current board would inflict better than it has to date. At the very least, the Bombardier board itself needs to be replaced and repopulated not with government representatives – as the Quebec government is proposing – but with independent directors (out of the box the case in non-dual-class firms). This will need a dismantling of the dual-class structure.

Reforms are needed to make sure that Bombardier’s subordinate shareholders can bring about the decision about who is around the board of this corporation. This isn’t the place for taxpayer money.

Anita Anand is the J.R. Kimber Chair in Investor Protection and Corporate Governance, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. Email: anita.anand@utoronto.ca

Home Capital Group Inc. leader Gerald Soloway is stepping down after almost 3 decades at the helm from the mortgage lender.

He will hand the reins to company president Martin K. Reid in the company’s annual meeting on May 11.

Soloway will remain a director of Home Capital and subsidiaries Home Trust and CFF Bank.

“The Board want to thank Jerry, on behalf of shareholders, employees and customers, for three decades of incredible service, building one of Canada’s premier banking institutions from humble beginnings and in doing so helping a large number of Canadians reach their house ownership goals,” Kevin P. D. Smith, chairman of the boards of Home Capital and it is subsidiaries, said inside a statement.

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Home Capital would be a darling of the financial services industry until a hiccup this past year. The firm cut ties with 45 lenders after an internal probe determined that “falsification of revenue information had occurred” on some loan applications.

However, the company concluded that no credit ratings or property values had been falsified, which was unlikely the problem would result in credit losses.

In Monday’s statement, Smith credited Soloway with pioneering residential mortgages for that self-employed, and for those “with limited credit rating that do not meet the lending criteria of major financial institutions.”

During his time as CEO, Home Capital grew from the dozen employees and about $51 million in assets to more than 870 employees and most $25 billion in loans under administration.

Reid, his 56-year-old replacement, joined Home Trust, the regulated lending subsidiary of Home Capital, in 2007, as treasurer. This year, he was promoted to president of Home Capital and Home Trust.

In that role, Reid has had “increasing responsibility for that daily operations from the business and interactions with Home Capital investors,” the company said inside a statement.

The motives fuelling a minority shareholder’s make an effort to thwart Corus’s $2.65 billion purchase of Shaw Media were called into question Friday, as Catalyst Capital Group Inc. aired its concerns about the proposed sale on the conference call with investors and analysts.

Catalyst, a personal equity firm with US$6 billion in assets that are experts in distressed situations, said its only objective would be to maximize the worth of those minority shares. The company says it owns no other position attached to the transition, apart from class B shares of Corus.

Catalyst has argued that Corus is overpaying for Shaw Media up to $858 million. The private equity firm is looking for that March 9 vote to be postponed, for more disclosure and the ability to ask questions directly of the Shaw family, which controls both Corus and Shaw Media’s parent company, Shaw Communications Inc.

“We have obtained extraordinary support from fellow shareholders,” said Gabriel de Alba, managing director and partner at Catalyst. He didn’t name any investors but said that some were large ones, which the momentum behind their cause has grown within the last 24 hours. “They’ve seen the same concerns that Catalyst has highlighted related to both valuation and reporting,” he added.

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But the broader market appears perplexed through the assault by Catalyst, that has long employed combative strategies simply purchasing large stakes as a creditor. Now, Catalyst claims to be fighting for the little guy who, it contends, is assuming more risk and it has seen his position become depressed and diluted.

Late in the 50-minute call, one person asked if de Alba would address what he described as “an elephant within the room,” referring to Catalyst’s bitter feud with private equity firm West Face Capital Inc., a trader in Wind Mobile Corp, which Shaw has proposed to purchase for $1.6 billion. Senior managers at Shaw asserted they plan to make use of the arises from the Shaw Media sale to invest in their December acquisition of Wind.

West Face bought a 35.42 percent stake in Wind as a member of a consortium of investors that purchased the carrier in September 2014 from the former foreign owner, VimpelCom Ltd., for an estimated $300 million.

In a lawsuit weaving its way through the courts, Catalyst had alleged that West Face secured its ownership stake in Wind by obtaining and taking advantage of confidential information that belonged to Catalyst, which in fact had been pursing Wind. Now, West Face stands to create lucrative returns with money paid by Corus.

“What you’re describing is really a beautiful soap opera” that should be “released on a women’s TV channel,” de Alba said in response to the question.

“That’s just a fantastic story which has absolutely nothing to do

China’s latest easing move signals that shoring up growth may be the government’s main concern even when doing this further weakens the yuan or contributes to leverage that threatens the longer-term health from the world’s second-biggest economy.

‘Good progress,’ but few details on how you can strengthen global economy as G20 summit concludes

Canada’s finance minister said G20 leaders ‘made good progress’ around the weekend however the actual text from the group’s communiqu offered few information on the agreement

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The People’s Bank of China said Monday that it’s cutting the quantity of cash the nation’s lenders must lock away. The move marked the very first time in 4 months that the central bank has used certainly one of its traditional monetary-easing tools, despite mounting signs of a weaker economy and a stock exchange in near-freefall.

The action came days before Premier Li Keqiang is anticipated to create the bar lower for gdp having a 2016 target expansion selection of 6.5 percent to 7 per cent, in contrast to last year’s goal of around 7 per cent. The renewed concentrate on growth could be at the cost of any effort to rein in ever-increasing debt: Chinese banks extended a record amount of new loans in January. Meantime, the yuan is down 3.6 per cent against the dollar since October.

“This move suggests that, ultimately, supporting growth takes priority over ,” Louis Kuijs, chief Asia economist at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong, said inside a note. “Today’s move matters when it comes to what it really signals about the policy direction,” said Kuijs, who formerly worked at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

PBOC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan highlighted scope for more action ahead of several 20 meeting in Shanghai last week, saying China had “multiple policy instruments” to address growth risks. The half percentage-point decline in the necessary reserve ratio will inject about 685 billion yuan (US$105 billion) in to the economic climate, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated.

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Economic Impact

Whether those funds actually stimulates the economy is yet another matter. Credit Suisse Group AG economist Tao Dong said the outcome depends on just how much banks are prepared to lend to house buyers.

Roberto Perli, a former Fed official who’s now a partner at Cornerstone Macro LLC in Washington, said in a note that the experience probably isn’t a “net monetary easing” since it replaces temporary cash injections. Or, as University of California at San Diego professor Victor Shih says, the move merely counteracts money outflows of recent months.

“It appears a bit desperate,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis SA in Hong Kong. “Zhou already said that he’d use monetary policy around needed to support growth, so this basically means that growth continues to be not coming naturally with the already lax monetary conditions.”

China might not be done easing. The most recent cut takes the ratio to 17 percent for that biggest banks, still among the highest such levels in the world.

The central bank said hello lowered the reserve ratio to guide stable and appropriate development in credit.

“This is unlikely to become the final RRR cut,” said Tim Condon, head of Asian research at ING Groep NV in Singapore. “The question is, just how long will it require these to follow up with an interest-rate cut.”

Stocks, Reserves

China is facing an abundance of difficulties in the economy and markets. The Shanghai Composite Index has declined 24 per cent this year, the worst performer among 93 global equity indexes. Foreign-exchange reserves have plummeted US$762 billion since mid-2014 because the government tried to defend a falling yuan.

Injecting stimulus in the form of debt could make things worse in the long run. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s investment management division has warned that China’s debt-to-GDP ratio increase is probably the highest in recent history. Debt will peak at 283 percent of GDP within the future years, according to the median estimate of eight economists inside a Bloomberg News survey published in February.

“The PBOC must walk an excellent line,” Oxford’s Kuijs said.

–With assistance from Xiaoqing Pi, Allen Wan, Tan Hwee Ann and Jeff Kearns.

Bloomberg News

Canadian pork processor Maple Leaf Foods Inc posted a better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit as margins in the prepared meats business improved.

Adjusted operating profit in the meat products group, which includes brands for example Schneiders and the company’s namesake Maple Leaf brand, was $54.6 million, in contrast to a year-ago loss of $19.A million.

The Mississauga, Canada-based company said margins at the business were helped partly by lower operating costs in the new prepared meat plants and pricing.

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Maple Leaf, which recently completed a restructuring program started in 2010 to enhance earnings by shutting or modernizing factories, raised its quarterly dividend by 1 cent per share to 9 cents per share.

Excluding items, Maple Leaf earned 25 cents per share, beating the average analyst estimate of 21 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net profit was $33.3 million, or 24 cents per share, for that fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, versus a net lack of $28.Two million, or 20 cents per share, last year.

Revenue rose nearly 10 % to $873.1 million within the latest quarter.

? Thomson Reuters 2016

HOUSTON ? Brian Ferguson was one of the oil executives in a global energy conference here listening intently now to Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi’s warning to high-cost producers to exit the trade. But he remains unmoved.

Good news, oilsands growth is unstoppable. Unhealthy news, it’s unstoppable

Claudia Cattaneo: Canada will keep churning out more oil, a minimum of until 2020, but it’s just that long-term horizon that could be our undoing inside a volatile future

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“Part of what (OPEC is) trying to do is create uncertainty about price, so longer-lead projects would be very hard,” the CEO of Calgary-based Cenovus Energy Inc. said in an interview around the sidelines of the IHS CERA event that attracted a couple of,800 energy industry executives and government officials, in addition to a strong contingent from Canada.

While U.S. shale producers attract much of OPEC’s ire, the Saudi oil minister also named the Canadian oilsands the type of who had prospered in the past decade as OPEC “subsidized” them, however it will now let free markets take over.

The OPEC-orchestrated free-for-all has sent oil prices reeling to some decade-low, leaving thousands in Calgary, Houston and elsewhere unemployed, with expected capital spending in the oilsands set to contract to $16 billion this year from $28 billion in 2014, according to Peters & Co.

“A very real and troubling impact of low oil prices includes reduced employment inside our companies and through the logistics, including transportation, manufacturing and high tech,” said Steve Williams, CEO of Suncor Energy Inc. inside a speech in the Houston event.

There is really a strong sense in the industry that this is really a structural, perplexing downturn.

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“Few people can tell you what is happening in oil markets, but I will try,” said an exasperated OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla Salem El-Badri, because he blamed just-in-time U.S. shale output for that market glut.

Canadian oil companies have little time for OPEC’s machinations.

“I can’t make my financial commitment on which OPEC may or may not do,” said Ferguson.

Cenvous plans to raise production by 100,000 barrels per day this year, area of the 800,000 bpd of Canadian oil likely to enter the market during the next 5 years, International Energy Agency estimates.



But Suncor’s Williams said the will have to “rethink” the way it operates and take advantage of the oilsands unique attributes.

“We are almost not part of the oil industry- just because a lot of the characteristics in our business are extremely different,” William said. “We have vast amounts of resource easily available and our clients are not just one of exploration, development and production. It’s largely capital investment- and very efficient manufacturing.”

Canadian producers will also be facing a unique domestic crisis, as not one other major oil-producing country on the planet has such a schizophrenic relationship with its resources.

Despite being home to the biggest coastline on the planet to its east and west, Canada includes a solitary, choked-full 300,000-barrels-per-day Trans Mountain pipeline to gain access to markets other than america. Plans for brand new conduits have been delayed, denied and disparaged as global warming issues involves the fore.

The newly elected Liberal government considers moving natural resources to markets a “national goal,” but Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr is careful not to cheer-lead the sector, instead focusing on putting in place a strong process that garners public confidence.

“Everybody knows that there needs to be regulatory reform to ensure that major projects to become approved,” Carr said within an interview in Houston. 

The industry doesn’t appear to be waiting for either OPEC or the Canadian government. Cenovus spend less by 30 per cent this past year and expects more reductions this year, because it aims to lower your turnaround time for large-scale projects and rein in steam-to-oil ratios.

Companies are also aiming to reduce their carbon emissions to ensure they continue to be within Alberta’s new 100-metric-tonne-per-year cap, without sacrificing growth.



“If you think the emissions cap is going to get in the way of future growth, you are either incredibly bullish on prices or incredibly bearish on technology, and I would say we want the opposite of this to achieve success,” said Andrew Leach, who spearheaded the climate change review panel set up through the NDP government in Alberta.

For its new projects, Suncor is planning to design an agenda once and replicate it 10 times to create economic savings that spend less up to 50 per cent and soften its impact on the environment.

“My feeling is technology will make a genuine impact on the environmental impact and the cost base,” Williams said. “I see those things over the following four or five years appear in certain scale.”

yhussain@nationalpost.com

twitter.com/YAD_FPEnergy

In early February, the Canadian Federation of scholars (CFS) released a research document. It determined, towards the surprise of nobody, that it’s within the public’s interest for the authorities at hand students billions of dollars more each year. One demand is a doubling in funding for that Youth Employment Strategy, which would cost $330 million per year. (When the CFS’s provincial campaigns to increase minimum wages to $15 are successful, private employers will surely hire fewer students. But governments as a rule are happy to overpay, hence the request another $330 million.)

Then comes balance larger demand: The CFS wants an end to undergraduate tuition fees in Canada. The ask comes despite the fact that only about one-quarter of universities’ revenues come from tuition fees, and the federal Liberals already promised up to $750 million of additional annual funding throughout the campaign. However the CFS is unsatisfied with $750 million; it wants more.

Marginal enrollment from eliminating tuition fees will likely come from unmotivated, lower-ability students

Within just a couple weeks, the CFS was suddenly a great deal nearer to getting what it really wanted, a minimum of in a single province – also it didn’t even have to wait for a federal budget. The federal government of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, Justin Trudeau’s ideological soulmate at Queen’s Park, announced a change of the student grant system. Under the Ontario Student Grant, “average college and university tuition is going to be free for college students with financial need from families with incomes of $50,000 or less, and tuition will be made more affordable for middle-income families,” based on the Ministry of Finance. The “free” tuition is going to be included in re-directing funds from current student grant programs and eliminating tuition tax credits.

There will be more grants and more interest-free loans. The Ministry of Finance boasts that more than half of students “from families with incomes of $83,000 or less will receive non-repayable grants which will exceed average university or college tuition” and that “all students will be the same or better off as under the Ontario Tuition Grant.”

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What happens when costly services like university education are supplied for free or in a steep discount? Invariably, there will be overconsumption. Actually, there already is, as seen in the relative unattractiveness of university graduates for employers, who’re evidently more hungry for workers with non-university skills: For each year since 1998, Canadian youth were more likely to be employed if they had got a new post-secondary diploma or certificate after high school instead of a university degree.

Making university education cheaper will fuel more overconsumption. It gets a whole lot worse when you consider where the marginal enrollment will require place, and among what kinds of students. High-ability students who enroll in mathematics, business, or science programs are already in university, because they believe the elevated future incomes will provide a sufficient return on their investments in education.

Marginal enrollment from eliminating tuition fees will likely originate from unmotivated, lower-ability students, as well as in less practical programs like theatre history or equity studies. These are students for whom university education is definitely an unprofitable investment unless taxpayers are footing most or all the tuition bill. Meanwhile, the structure of Ontario’s new funding arrangement actually can lure would-be students to less expensive programs like arts, in which the province covers nearly all of the tuition with its $6,000 a year average grant, rather than a $11,000-a-year architecture degree or a $13,000-a-year engineering degree, in which the province covers only area of the cost.

Eliminating tuition fees will also have the perverse effect of discouraging students from graduating on time. Students are less motivated to avoid failing courses when they don’t have to purchase additional semesters.

So cheapening or eliminating tuition fees likely won’t mean better computer scientists and more engineers; it’ll mean more party students, more 25-year-old social justice warriors in their seventh year of undergraduate human rights studies, and more campus climate activists. But then, Wynne and Trudeau surely wouldn’t mind using a much more of those.

Matthew Lau is a finance and economics student at the University of Toronto.

NEW YORK – Subway customers can finally be assured that their “Footlong” sandwiches will be so long as promised.

The go up and down of Subway: The way the world’s biggest food chain lost its ‘fresh’ appeal

With 43,945 sandwich shops in 110 countries, Subway has become the world’s most ubiquitous restaurant chain, posting armies of “sandwich artists” in more American outposts than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined.

Continue reading.

A judge a week ago granted final approval to a settlement of the class-action suit filed against Subway after an Australian teenager in 2013 posted a picture of his sandwich on Facebook which was only 11 inches. The image garnered international media attention, with The Ny Post writing that it found four out of seven Footlongs it bought in New York “measured only 11 or 11.5 inches.”

A judge had given preliminary approval in October to a settlement between Subway’s parent company Doctor’s Associates and plaintiffs’ attorneys. Final approval was granted on Feb. 25.

As part of the settlement, Subway agreed to institute practices not less than 4 years to ensure its bread is at least One foot long. The judge approved US$520,000 in attorney fees and US$500 for each from the 10 those who were representatives of the class, but no monetary claims were awarded to potential people in the category.

“It was hard to prove monetary damages, because everybody ate the evidence,” said Thomas Zimmerman, who was co-lead attorney for the class. Zimmerman said the lawyer fees are now being split among 10 lawyers.

Subway said in a statement that it was pleased the judge found no wrongdoing on its part.

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“This allows us to maneuver forward, without distractions, on our goal to provide great tasting sandwiches and salads, made exactly as each guest likes. We have already taken steps to make sure each guest receives the Footlong or six-inch sandwich they order,” the statement said.

Lynn Adelman, the court for that U.S. District Court Eastern District of Wisconsin, wrote within the final approval the plaintiffs’ attorneys realized their claims “were quite weak” after a preliminary mediation session. Rather than looking to get class certification for monetary damages, he explained plaintiffs decided to focus on injunctive relief requiring Doctor’s Associates to ensure its sandwiches are in least One foot long.

It was hard to prove monetary damages, because everybody ate the evidence.

Adelman wrote that the plaintiffs’ attorneys learned Subway makes its bread with “dough sticks” that weigh the same once they get to stores frozen. The dough will be thawed and stretched before baking, a procedure that can result in variability in the shape and size from the resulting bread.

While the dough may have different shapes, still it has got the same volume of ingredients, Adelman wrote. The amount of meat and cheese can also be standardized, but it’s entirely possible that a shorter bread loaf might lead to a slightly less toppings. For instance, “a sandwich that was 1/4-inch shorter than advertised may be missing a few shreds of lettuce or perhaps a gram or two of mayonnaise,” the judge wrote.

But Adelman also noted that sandwiches are made in front from the customer, who are able to request more toppings.

“Thus, the plaintiffs learned that, as a practical matter, the length of the bread does not affect the amount of food the customer receives,” Adelman wrote.

Still, Subway agreed as part of the settlement to take steps to make sure its bread is at least 12 inches long, including requiring franchisees to “make use of a tool for measuring bread.”

OMAHA, Neb. – The United States’ economy is within better shape compared to presidential candidates allow it to be seem, investor Warren Buffett said Saturday, despite the fact that businesses like his still face challenges.

In his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett didn’t name specific candidates or issues, but noted that the negative drumbeat concerning the economy, healthcare reform and income inequality may get voters down about the future.

“It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, obviously, only they are able to solve),” he explained, adding later, “that view is dead wrong: The babies being born in the usa today are the luckiest crop ever.”

The answer such disruptions isn’t the restraining or outlawing of actions that increase productivity. Americans would not be living nearly as along with we all do when we had mandated that 11 million people should forever are employed in farming.

Buffett noted that there will still be economic troubles as business evolves, but that the country must make certain it features a solid safety net to help people who lose jobs.

“The answer such disruptions is not the restraining or outlawing of actions that increase productivity. Americans would not be living as along with we do when we had mandated that 11 million people should forever be employed in farming,” he wrote.

Buffett pointed out that change also creates challenges for Berkshire’s businesses. For example, its BNSF railroad is certain to haul less coal in the future and Geico insurance might be hurt by driverless cars.

He assured shareholders that Berkshire’s businesses will adapt just as the company did when its original Berkshire Hathaway textile operation failed.

Buffett’s letter is one of the most well-read documents the business world each year because of his successful track record and his knack for explaining complicated subjects in simple terms.

Buffett said it value of Berkshire’s businesses improved 6.4 percent this past year even as its stock price fell 12.5 percent. When dividends are factored in, the S&P 500 gained 1.4 % in comparison. Buffett has warned that it’ll be increasingly a hardship on Berkshire to continue beating the marketplace because the clients are so large.

Berkshire Hathaway employs more than 360,000 people at its eclectic mix of companies, including insurance, utilities, railroad, manufacturing and retail firms. Berkshire also holds significant stakes in Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, American Express, IBM and other companies.

CALGARY – Enbridge Inc. says it raised $2.3 billion in the latest stock offering since it’s syndicate of underwriters fully exercised their option to buy additional shares within the pipeline operator.

The Calgary-based company had initially planned to raise $2 billion, but the underwriters – including Canada’s five biggest banks – bought one more 7.4 million shares.

The underwriters paid $40.70 per share for that stock. The group includes RBC Capital Markets and it is counterparts at BMO, CIBC, Scotiabank and TD. It also includes Credit Suisse, one of Switzerland’s biggest banks.

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Enbridge says it’ll use arises from the sale to reduce its debt.

The company also expects the cash is going to be sufficient to support its growth program through the end of 2017.

Enbridge has a number of projects within the planning stages, including the Northern Gateway pipeline across British Columbia. It completed 14 projects worth $8 billion in 2015.

OTTAWA – The federal government says the legal overview of Canada’s free trade deal with the European Union has been completed – and also the door is open for that pact to come into force next year.

An agreement in principle was reached around the comprehensive deal, known as CETA, in October 2013. Negotiations between Canada and also the 28-member EU began in 2009.

The agreement was negotiated under the former Conservative government, but International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland said Monday the Liberals supported CETA during opposition.

“This is actually a gold-plated trade deal,” said Freeland, who added that CETA’s entry into force can give Canada access to an industry of 500 million people.

“It will bring tremendous benefit to Canadians and also to Europeans. We are going to feel everything inside a real increase in prosperity and I’m confident this is going to become the landmark trade agreement.”

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In making the announcement, Freeland pointed to modifications including changes that strengthen the best of governments to manage, including in areas such as labour and the environment.

“These days, it’s right and appropriate to make clear in trade agreements the power, and even the democratic responsibility, of governments to regulate,” she said.



Modifications, she added, are also made to allow for a permanent dispute-settlement tribunal and an appeal system.

“The core perception of having a dispute-resolution process is not to supersede that right to regulate – it’s to ensure that governments don’t discriminate against foreign investors,” Freeland said. “That’s the core idea behind trade deals.”

Earlier this month, Canada’s chief negotiator Steve Verhuel told a parliamentary committee that Ottawa was working with the EU to revise controversial investor protection provisions in CETA.

Verhuel said Ottawa was exploring whether improvements might make the dispute-resolution mechanism more favourable to Canada.

The Europeans first raised the matter after political opposition surfaced in Europe in 2014 over the chapter that are responsible for settling disputes between companies and governments, referred to as ISDS.

Some European politicians and anti-trade activists have expressed concerns that the investor-state dispute settlement chapter will give big companies the ability to sue governments for creating regulations affecting their profits.

They have warned it might undermine the ability of countries to manage environmental and health policies, among other things.

European officials, such as the EU ambassador to Canada, have said they didn’t see ISDS as an impediment to the pact’s implementation.

Freeland, who expects to sign the deal later this season, said she didn’t hear any opposition to CETA during consultations she held on it across the nation.

She said there’s still time before next year’s ratification to appear closely in the agreement to determine potential negative effects for some sectors and how Ottawa can respond to them.