On National Treatment Provisions Of Canadian Regional Services Trade Agreements

In recent years, regional economic integrations are flourishing and to becomplementary to the multilateral trade organization. Much attention is attractedto the new rise of trade in services, which has also become the focus of theinternational law scholars. The increase of regional trade agreementsundoubtedly exacerbated the phenomenon of fragmentation of international law,and how to coordinate potential conflicts between regional trade rules andmultilateral trade rules, becomes important issues. As the member of NAFTA,one of the world’s most mature economic integration organizations, Canada isalso a member of the WTO. It must comply with the rules of regional tradeagreements and at the same time does not violate WTO obligations. Based onanalyzing the main rules of Canada regional services trade agreements, thisarticle focuses on "like circumstances" of the National Treatment, and comparesit with "like services and service provider" of GATS National Treatment. Bytaking into account the defined standards in the practice, harmonization ofinterpretation is a valued method to solve the potential rules conflict.This paper is divided into five parts:Part I introduces the summary of Canada regional services trade agreementsand their characteristics, and then analyzes their consistence with GATS V.After a brief description of the rules conflict, Part II puts forward thequestion, where is the potential conflict between National Treatment of Canadaregional services trade agreements and multilateral rules. Then the interpretationof rules is proposed as a method of harmonizing the potential conflict.Part III tries to harmonize the interpretation of the national treatmentprovisions of Canada regional services trade agreements with that of multilateralrules, through treaty interpretation including jurisprudential transplantation.Here,"like circumstances" will be defined on the basis of the analysis of specific cases, and with the comparative analysis of "like services and service providers"for harmonious interpretation.Part IV gives some inspirations and advices about the regional services tradenegotiations between China and Canada.Finally, Part V is the conclusion of this article.