The following is excerpted from 19 June 2013 article by the Canadian Press.
White House officials will be at the Canadian embassy on Thursday to discuss a joint Canada-U.S. 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, many of whom will be in attendance at 501 Pennsylvania Avenue, 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 North American market?”
Two White House regulatory officials — Andrei Greenawalt and Dominic Mancini — will likely be pressed by stakeholders for reassurances that the Obama administration still considers the RCC a priority and fully backs the council’s work.
The council’s creation, along with the Beyond the Border initiatives, was announced with great fanfare in 2011 by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but White House turnover, among other issues, has hindered progress…
Council officials are expected to assure business representatives on Thursday that they’re taking on a bigger mandate in the weeks to come, initiating a “summer dialogue” on sectors that haven’t yet been dealt with. That’s following pressure from both the Canadian American Business Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among other stakeholders, to take on a bigger load.
Energy efficiency is on the council’s agenda this summer, says Warrington Ellacott, senior manager of government relations for Whirlpool Canada.
“We’re discussing some challenges facing our sector and using the current regulatory disparity between the Natural Resources Ministry in Canada and the U.S. Energy Department as an example,” he said…
Ellacott added that RCC officials are “very interested in the disparities and they see this as an opportunity for change.”
Greenwood added that in times of austerity, cutting regulatory red tape is even more important — a point she hopes to make on Thursday to U.S. officials…
This article is available in its entirety at: http://www.680news.com/2013/06/19/white-house-officials-at-meeting-on-harmonizing-canada-u-s-trade-regulations/ (subscription may be required)