Harmonizing Canada-U.S. trade regulations back on front burner

White House officials will be at the Canadian embassy on Thursday to discuss a joint Canada-United States initiative feared to be on life support in recent months — the Regulatory Co-operation Council, aimed at harmonizing trade regulations to ease cross-border trade between the world’s two biggest trading partners.

Both Canadian and American stakeholders and business representatives, have been complaining for months about the slow pace of progress on behalf of American officials, and have questioned the U.S. commitment to the two-year-old initiative.

“The majority of the organizational work has been handled by the Canadians, now it’s time to see if the U.S. government is ready to breathe new life into the initiative,” Maryscott Greenwood, head of the Canadian American Business Council and a moderator at the event, said Wednesday.

“The cost of not making progress on RCC is unacceptable to the business community … In this day and age, why would you test and certify products twice for one integrated the North American market?”

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