Raphael John-Lall

Cana­da’s High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Arif Ke­shani has point­ed out that T&T is Cana­da’s largest trad­ing part­ner in Cari­com and the com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship goes back hun­dreds of years.

He iden­ti­fied some of T&T’s main strengths which in­clude a strate­gic lo­ca­tion, a skilled and di­verse work­force which all po­si­tion the coun­try as an at­trac­tive in­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion.

“The po­ten­tial for part­ner­ships ex­ist in ar­eas like clean tech­nolo­gies, en­er­gy, In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and ed­u­ca­tion. And as was men­tioned, T&T is Cana­da’s largest trad­ing mar­ket in Cari­com which is a sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ment of the re­la­tion­ship. Cana­da is very pleased to have in place the Cana­da-Cari­com Trade Agree­ment (CARIB­CAN). Re­gion­al­ly, this agree­ment al­lows for 96 per cent of prod­ucts and ser­vices from the Cari­com re­gion to en­ter in­to Cana­da du­ty free. But in the case of T&T, that el­e­vates to 98 per cent that en­ters du­ty free to Cana­da and has ac­cess to a mar­ket of 40 mil­lion peo­ple,” he said.

Ke­shani spoke last Wednes­day at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries Do­ing Busi­ness with the World se­ries we­bi­nar.

He al­so spoke about Cana­da’s Trade Com­mis­sion­er Ser­vice (TCS) which sup­ports Cana­di­an com­pa­nies do­ing busi­ness abroad and in­vest­ment in Cana­da.

“TCS is a net­work of over 1,000 pro­fes­sion­als with a pres­ence in over 160 mar­kets world­wide pro­vid­ing ser­vices to Cana­di­an com­pa­nies. It is al­so worth high­light­ing that T&T made the pro­gres­sive step of re­cent­ly an­nounc­ing com­mer­cial pro­grammes in sev­er­al of its mis­sions abroad. Specif­i­cal­ly, with re­spect to Cana­da, there will be a trade of­fice ap­point­ed in Mi­a­mi which will have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the US and Cana­da.”

He praised the TTC­SI’s se­ries as be­ing in­dus­try rel­e­vant.

“It is an am­bi­tious ini­tia­tive that un­der­scores the im­por­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion, in­no­va­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships in a mod­ern glob­al econ­o­my. As we gath­er vir­tu­al­ly this morn­ing to dis­cuss trade be­tween Cana­da and T&T, I am re­mind­ed of the rich ta­pes­try, his­to­ry and friend­ship that con­nect our two na­tions.”

He added that Cana­da and T&T en­joy a long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship premised on com­mer­cial re­la­tions, strong peo­ple-to-peo­ple ties and shared val­ues.

“As diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions were es­tab­lished in 1962, pre­ced­ing this two-way trade be­tween our two na­tions and be­tween our re­gions, the British West In­dies and No­va Sco­tia be­gan in the 1700s. Cana­di­an banks found their foot­ing in T&T dur­ing the ear­ly 1900s, es­tab­lish­ing fi­nan­cial links be­tween our two coun­tries. Cana­da ap­point­ed its first full time trade rep­re­sen­ta­tive to T&T in 1938, which fur­ther ad­vanced diplo­mat­ic ties be­tween Cana­da and T&T.”

On the ed­u­ca­tion front, he said Rev­erend John Mor­ton from Cana­da be­gan es­tab­lish­ing Pres­by­ter­ian schools in T&T in the mid 1800’s and to­day many T&T cit­i­zens choose Cana­da for uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion.

He al­so said both coun­tries share many val­ues like democ­ra­cy, the rule of law and re­spect for hu­man rights.

“These prin­ci­ples pro­vide a sol­id foun­da­tion for our col­lab­o­ra­tion in many spheres. Cana­da is one of the world’s largest trad­ing na­tions with a phe­nom­e­nal Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) of over US$2 tril­lion. Our ded­i­ca­tion to in­no­va­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment aligns well with the goals of this se­ries. We be­lieve that in­no­va­tion is es­sen­tial to dri­ving eco­nom­ic progress and en­hanc­ing the well be­ing of our cit­i­zens.”