Canada-EU Free-Trade Talk

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Quebec will soon sign an agreement with France that provides labor mobility to their citizens. This will set a tone for the upcoming Canada-EU free trade negotiation, and if succeed, will provide citizens of the two jurisdictions free labor mobility. This is both exciting and visionary. As I study the more on the topic of trade, I become an advocate of free labor mobility as a solution for changing economies.

This is an especially good news for people in the knowledge-based economy. As jobs demand more and more highly-specialized skills like science, technology, and finance, and shift in the economy will make it particularly painful for highly-skilled workers to adjust. Not all Ph.D. in biology can be retrained into a CFA. And you’ll be scared to have an i-banker retrained to work in the lab likewise. By giving labor the ability to move to other regions or countries where their skills are needed, the knowledge and experience will not be lost.

Certainly, how well this works out depends on what the two countries have to offer each other. But this certainly is a good first step towards a broader labor mobility agreement between EU and Canada.