“I look forward to working with the team in advocating on behalf of Canada’s meat industry and delivering value to members. It will be a pleasure to continue working in the agriculture and agri-food space in Ottawa,” Larkin said in a Dec. 9 LinkedIn post.

The Canadian Meat Council represents members of the Canadian meat processing industry.

Earlier this month, Larkin announced he would step down from his role at Grain Growers of Canada. December will be Larkin’s final month at the organization. He’ll officially assume the CEO role on Jan. 19, 2026, the Canadian Meat Council said in a news release.

“He brings the strategic understanding, relationship-building skills and member-focused approach needed to position our industry for long-term success,” said council board chair Russ Mallard.

The meat council said the transition comes at a “critical time for CMC and the broader meat industry,” given growing pressures in areas like trade and regulation.

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“The chance to demonstrate our commitment to such an important market is an opportunity that we are very excited about.” said David Typer, chair of the Canadian Meat Advocacy Board, in a Canadian Meat Council news release.

“We will soon begin our search for a China representative. Once the hiring process is complete, operations will be launched.”

The Canadian Meat Advocacy Office is a collaboration between the Canadian Meat Council, Canadian Pork Council and the Canadian Cattle Association.

The group called the office a tangible demonstration that the Canadian pork and beef sectors are eager to have a stronger presence in the Chinese market.

Goals of the office include advancing the interests of Canadian red meat in China, establishing and enhancing the presence of Canadian meat in the Chinese market, addressing market access issues, mitigating potential trade disruption, and building trust with Chinese officials, industry leaders according to a job posting on recruiting website Glassdoor.

Red meat is just one sector that has struggled with fraught relations between Canada and China. In 2019, China blocked shipments of Canadian pork and beef, citing bogus export certificates, as tensions escalated following the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. China also stopped purchasing Canadian canola seed, citing pest concerns.

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Both organizations highlighted the need for an African Swine Fever trade recovery program to regain market access and stabilize the industry in the case of an outbreak. They also expressed their needs for a reliable agricultural workforce and asked the government to prioritize solutions to support the industry’s year-round needs.

“These were important days for our industry,” said CPC chair René Roy. “By joining forces with the Canadian Meat Council, we presented a united front to advocate for the priorities of the Canadian pork sector. Our conversations emphasized the urgent need to address challenges like ASF, expand trade opportunities, and agriculture’s unique labour needs, priorities which are crucial for sustaining and growing our industry. We look forward to continuing to work with policymakers to advance these priorities.”

“Our joint lobby day showcased the power of collaboration,” said Chris White, president and CEO of CMC and Canada Pork. “Together, we were able to effectively spotlight issues affecting both producers and processors in a way that demonstrates our industry’s cohesive vision for the future. We are grateful to all the parliamentarians and officials who joined us and look forward to building on these discussions.”

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On Jan. 15, Canada’s minister responsible for vaccine procurement, Anita Anand, said the country’s supply of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine was experiencing a temporary delay because the company was taking time to scale up its production capacity.

“This expansion work means that Pfizer is temporarily reducing deliveries to all countries receiving vaccine manufactured at its European facility – and that includes Canada,” said Anand.

The delay isn’t expected to impact Canada’s long-term vaccination timeline, which aims to have everyone who wishes to be vaccinated by September. A little less than 400,000 doses have been received in Canada so far.

Close to two million more doses were originally expected to arrive in February, but that is no longer guaranteed.

Provinces are responsible for rolling out the vaccines at their own discretion, based on guidelines provided by the federal government.

According to those guidelines, people who are a high risk of dying from the virus or are “most likely to transmit COVID-19 to those at high risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 and workers essential to maintaining the COVID-19 response” should be prioritized.

To date, there is no indication temporary foreign workers or people employed in meat-packing facilities have received the vaccine anywhere in Canada.

There also appears to be few plans in place from governments to ensure they receive the vaccine.

Hundreds of employees at meat-packing plants and temporary foreign workers have tested positive for COVID-19, causing temporary shutdowns at some facilities.

Manitoba and Alberta didn’t respond to questions directly asking about their plans to provide vaccines to temporary foreign workers; but with limited supplies, provinces are focusing on immunizing health-care workers.

Details on what the second phase of those provinces’ vaccine rollout plan will look like are not available.

Saskatchewan’s government said in a statement that it is using the federal recommendations to determine who gets priority for a vaccine, but offered no specific plans for how temporary foreign workers would be vaccinated.

“Saskatchewan’s vaccine delivery plans for the first phase to focus on immunizing priority populations who are at a higher risk of exposure to the virus or more at risk of serious illness — health-care workers, elderly residents in care homes, seniors over 80 and residents in northern remote communities. Immunization will occur as vaccine is delivered to the province.”

Quebec’s preliminary proposed order of priority groups for a vaccine lists 10 steps, but none speak specifically to temporary foreign workers. The province’s first three phases focus on vulnerable people in long-term care homes and health-care workers.

They then plan on vaccinating people in isolated communities, elderly people and younger adults with chronic diseases before vaccinating the remaining population.

British Columbia has details for its first two phases of a vaccine rollout, but neither addresses when temporary foreign workers will receive their doses. The province’s second phase, which includes vaccines for people who are homeless or in a correctional facility, is expected to run from February to March.

Ontario has three phased approaches for its vaccine rollout. The second phase of that province’s rollout plan will give vaccines to front-line essential workers, including those in the food-processing industry. That tranche of people is expected to be included in a mass delivery of vaccines taking place from March to July.

Near the end of 2020, the Canadian Meat Council (CMC) said essential meat workers need to be a priority group of workers to receive the vaccine.

“We are urging the government to prioritize the COVID-19 vaccination for those working in the meat industry, following first responders, health-care workers, those in long-term care facilities and other front-line workers,” said Chris White, president of the Canadian Meat Council (CMC) in a statement. “Our efforts are working, but access to vaccines remains the most critical tool to protect this critical workforce and ensure that Canadians can always find meat on the shelves at their grocery store.”

CMC was joined by 13 other associations supporting agri-food workers being a priority to get vaccinated.

United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which represents thousands of front-line workers, offered a similar sentiment.

The group said in December that after health-care employees, “workers in the food retail and manufacturing, meat-processing, long-term care and home-care, and security industries should be considered priority recipients as part of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout.”

In the United States, meat-packing and poultry-processing workers are expected to be next in line for vaccines, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control advisory committee’s guidelines.

Those recommendations differ from Canada’s in that they place meat-packing workers ahead of some senior citizens and younger Americans with medical conditions that make them a high risk of infection.

But like Canada, the federal government is only providing guidelines and U.S. states will establish their own prioritization plans.

A Chicago-based report released in January by a group of labour rights groups argues workers in food distribution, production, and logistics employed by temporary staffing agencies or subcontractors should be prioritized for early access to the vaccine, alongside other food system workers.

Advocates for the report say ensuring these workers can access the vaccine is an issue of racial justice, because most of the workers they are speaking about are Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC).

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The organizations involved in Canada’s National Beef Strategy — the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, Canada Beef Breeds Council, Beef Cattle Research Council, Canada Beef, The National Cattle Feeders’ Association, Canadian Meat Council and Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef have announced new 2030 goals.

Goals have been announced on three topics so far — greenhouse gas and carbon sequestration; animal health and welfare and land use and biodiversity — with another four topics to come next year.

Strategy organizations have set a goal to “safeguard the existing 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon stored on lands managed with beef cattle,” on top of sequestering an additional 3.4 million tonnes of carbon every year through grazing management and a focus on soil health.

Those gains would reflect the change if all tame pasture and hay acres sequestered carbon at half of the 70-year historical rate, the team developing the goals have said.

The goals would also see the industry’s greenhouse gas emission intensity drop by 33 per cent.

“We looked at what our long-term performance was in a number of areas and said, ‘What if we just continued to do what we have historically?'” said Brenna Grant, Canfax manager and one of the presenters of the goals at their launch on Wednesday (Sept. 16).

“And then we talked about some major breakthroughs — major breakthroughs in terms of technology and innovation or major breakthroughs in terms of adoption rates for certain practices.”

Those breakthrough scenarios are anticipated to create the desired emissions drop.

On animal health, organizations hope to see a 92 per cent reproductive efficiency across the industry (up from 85 per cent reported in 2018), refocus breeding on traits that support animal health such as calving ease and polled genes, encourage management strategies around things like pain relief, and create a national monitoring system to track practices. Other goals would better outline best antimicrobial practices to, “ensure the effectiveness of existing and future antimicrobials is preserved.

Other goals orient around maintaining the native grassland used for beef production and encouraging ecosystems on grazing land. The 2016 census of agriculture noted a 4.4 per cent decline of tame and native pastures from 2011 to 2016 as more producers opted for annual crops.

“We knew that we needed a market mechanism in order to achieve this,” Grant said. “So yes, focusing on economic viability of producers, but also by supporting programs that incentivize conservation and working with other crop groups across Canada to make sure that this happens.”

Dennis Laycraft, executive vice-president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said the implementation of those goals will depend largely on increasing the efficiency of each operation.

According to documents on the strategy’s website, some of those tools include increased vaccination, the adoption of different pasture management and low-stress handling, increased extension, encouraging feed plans, body condition scoring, and feed testing, pursuing more research on pasture management, and more extension and education, among others.

“They’re ambitious goals,” Laycraft admitted. “But our producer network that we worked with when we set this up really encouraged us to follow ambitious goals. I think Canada will be one of the world leaders and, at the same time, it is our goal to make sure whenever we do this we actually make our industry stronger in the process.”

The organizations expect to launch 2030 goals on water; beef quality and food safety; human health and safety and technology next year.

For more details, keep an eye on upcoming issues of the Manitoba Co-operator.

— Alexis Stockford is a reporter for the Manitoba Co-operator.

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Conservative Party of Canada Agriculture Critic John Barlow introduced the bill with the goal of punishing those responsible for on-farm protests.

Why it matters: Protesters are increasingly entering livestock barns and taking animals, potentially introducing disease and disrupting the animals.

“There are a lot of variables (farmers) have to deal with, commodity prices, now a carbon tax and illegal blockades,” he said. “Having to deal with activists and protesters coming on your property and into your barns and onto your land is just one thing that we don’t think that they should have to deal with,” he said.

If passed, the bill would amend the Health of Animals Act and make it an offence to enter a place where animals are kept without permission if doing so could result in the animals being exposed to disease or a toxic substance.

Ontario has proposed similar legislation.

It has the support of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Canadian Meat Council, Canadian Pork Council, Chicken Farmers of Canada, Egg Farmers of Canada and Turkey Farmers of Canada.

“We are not trying to muzzle free speech. This is nothing against legal protesting,” Barlow said. “You can do that on public land, that is fine. But when you cross that line onto private property, we have an issue.”

The bill would also put in place a financial penalty and potential jail time for people involved in threatening on-farm animals. A fine of up to $50,000 or up to two years of imprisonment is included for individuals, while every person other than an individual – essentially meaning organizations – who contravene the new law would be subject to a fine of up to $500,000.

“A lot of times these protesters don’t really understand the potential consequences of when they are endangering animal health,” said Barlow.

“The feeling that we had was, you know, a lot of these groups are now very well funded, very well organized by large organizations like PETA and the World Wildlife Fund,” he said. “To just have a small fine for an individual is one thing, but I think the groups that are organizing this and putting our food supply and the biosecurity of our supply chain at risk, there has to be consequences for them as well.”

Lisa Bishop-Spencer, director of brand and communications for Chicken Farmers of Canada, said producers take a lot of pride in raising safe food for Canadians.

“We have a government-recognized on-farm food safety program that strictly enforces biosecurity measures on every farm across the country,” she said. “It’s a mandatory program. It’s an enforceable program. It’s a third-party audit program.”

Anything that helps to strengthen animal health laws is good for the chicken farmers, according to Bishop-Spencer, who said she is encouraged people within the House of Commons are recognizing the issue because it is a substantive threat to farmers.

“I can’t tell you specifically how many on-farm trespassers there have been as a result of activism, as we call it, but I can tell you that it has increased,” she said. “We’re always hearing about it, it was becoming a new method by which attention could be drawn to those who wish animal agriculture didn’t exist.”

She added it’s a concern the organization hears about weekly from farmers.

While private member bills often don’t pass, Barlow is hopeful for some bipartisan support in the Liberal minority government.

“It’s also raising some awareness that our farmers, our producers, processors, they care more than anyone in the world about the health of their environment, their animals and their operations,” said Barlow. “This is also an opportunity for us to highlight the work that they’re doing to kind of change the narrative that, you know, Canadian farmers and agriculture do better than anybody in the world. And we should be proud of that, not attacking them.

“We’re all worried about the safety of our food. And we want to make sure it’s protected.”

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“It’s a bit too soon to tell to get a real dollar figure on it, because it is a situation where, when we want to sell pork, we’re trying to maximize the value of that product,” Gary Stordy, Canadian Pork Council’s director of government and corporate affairs, said.

The pork sector is searching new markets after Canadian beef and pork exports to China ground to a halt last week. The pork market may not be getting the best value for its product as a result of that scramble, Stordy said.

Earlier in June, news broke that Quebec shipping and meat storage company Frigo Royal Inc. had been suspended from shipping pork into China, following ractopamine residues found in one pork shipment. The additive is used to improve leanness and is banned in places like China and Europe. Canadian Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau later said a CFIA investigation had been launched.

Why it matters: The sudden halt of Canadian meat to China hits hard at the Manitoba livestock sector, and pork producers particularly, while contributing to continuing trade tensions.

The report baffled the pork sector, which largely weaned itself off the additive years ago to boost trade in countries like China. Stordy pointed to the Ractopamine-Free Certification Program in place at federally inspected slaughter plants.

The situation came to a head early last week after the CFIA found faked export certificates. “This incident is specific to export certificates to China,” a statement from Bibeau’s office read. “Export certificates to other countries are not affected.”

On June 26, a spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy announced that China had asked Canada to suspend meat export certificates for all Canadian meat as of June 25. China had, “immediately suspended the import of pork products from the relevant enterprises,” following the ractopamine report, the spokesperson told reporters.

The Chinese Embassy says the investigation revealed that veterinary health certificates attached to the shipment were fake and that up to 188 forged certificates had been found, a number the CFIA had yet to confirm at the time of printing.

“These forged certificates were sent to the Chinese regulatory authorities through (the) Canadian official certificate notification channel,” the same Chinese Embassy spokesperson said, noting that revealed, “obvious safety loopholes,” in the Canadian meat export system.

The RCMP has since been brought in to investigate the fake paperwork’s origin. There were no further updates as of print deadline.

Neither the federal government nor the pork sector is convinced, however, that the shipment originated in Canada at all.

“When it comes to ractopamine, that was our first flag, when there was a positive test,” Stordy said. “The pork industry doesn’t use that and goes to great lengths to make sure that it doesn’t come into contact with live animals so that we don’t have cross-contamination.”

Bibeau and International Trade Diversification Minister Jim Carr took a similar stance last week.

“Somebody is trying to use the Canadian brand to move product into the Chinese market,” Carr said, according to the Reuters new service.

Damage done

The pork sector has been circling the wagons since the halt in Chinese trade.

China is among the top three countries for Manitoba pork exports. A March industry profile by the province cited over $1 billion worth of pork exports annually, with the bulk going to Japan, the U.S. and China.

Both the Manitoba Pork Council and HyLife Foods founder Claude Vielfaure declined to comment on the sudden halt of export permits, turning all questions instead to Stordy or the Canadian Meat Council. Maple Leaf Foods was also asked for comment, but did not reply.

Pork and beef already bound for China as of June 25 continued to move, Stordy said, although no new export permits are being issued.

“We don’t want to take our foot off the gas,” he said. “We have pork and animals being raised as we speak and the pork, ideally, needs to find a home. “Unfortunately, China is not the place where this is going to go, so it’s a matter of whether other export markets can absorb the product.”

At the same time, Stordy dismissed concerns of a Canadian oversupply. He argued that producers, if anything, should be ramping up barn investment.

“China is an important market that we believe we’ll eventually return to at some point, ideally in the near future and, overall, the fundamentals of the global pork industry are strong and producers should be encouraged,” he said.

He added that the sector will work with the federal government to prevent similar issues in the future and regain market access.

Where’s the beef?

The beef sector also greeted last week’s news with concern. The pork sector has taken most of the spotlight on the issue, although beef trade has also halted.

Tom Teichroeb, Manitoba Beef Producers president, stressed the need for “good science” as they wait for investigations to conclude.

The impact to the beef sector is also unknown.

“We simply don’t know,” Teichroeb said. “We are in the midst of having like-minded officials from both countries trying to determine how to best manage going forward here.”

The beef sector made vast improvements to traceability following the 2003 BSE crisis, he said, something he hopes will pay off now to secure Canada’s continued reputation in the global meat market.

“We would hope that, moving forward, we would look at the history and how robust of a system we do have and let’s make good decisions based on that,” he said.

Stordy also dismissed concerns that the fake certificates might cast a shadow on Canada’s trade with other countries. The situation was contained between Canada and China, he said.

Meat exports

• To date, pork exports to China have increased 52 per cent over the same period last year
• Beef exports show a 388 per cent increase over last year
• In 2018, China was the second largest market for pork exports, valued at $514.3 million
• In 2018, beef export to China was valued at $97.3 million and was Canada’s fifth largest export market

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The news agency quoted a notice from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada which said the Canadian embassy in Beijing had been informed of the boost in inspections.

AAFC’s notice, according to Reuters, said Chinese officials were citing “recent cases of non-compliance of pork shipments” for the move and were also connecting it to anti-smuggling efforts and limiting risk of African swine fever.

Outbreaks of African swine fever have been reported in hogs in nearly every region of mainland China since the disease first appeared there last August.

Some analysts have predicted China’s hog herd could lose up to 200 million pigs to the disease or culls, with ripple effects through meat and livestock feed markets worldwide.

Reuters on Tuesday also quoted a Canadian Meat Council (CMC) memo to members in which the meatpacking industry body warned members to “increase significantly the surveillance and compliance with all requirements.”

Any non-compliance “could jeopardize our entire meat exports to China, which would have a disastrous effect on all CMC members,” the council’s memo was quoted as saying.

Two Canadian pork exporters’ permits to ship to China were suspended last month due to what Canadian officials described as a labeling problem with shipments.

China in March also suspended canola export licenses for two major Canadian grain firms and Chinese buyers have since been unwilling to purchase Canada’s canola seed otherwise.

Bilateral trade relations between Canada and China took a turn for the worse back in December when Canadian officials arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer for Chinese tech company Huawei, in Vancouver.

Meng, now in Vancouver under house arrest, was detained at the request of the U.S. government, which seeks her extradition on fraud charges relating to alleged violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Reuters also reported Tuesday that a federal court hearing will be held Thursday to set further court dates related to the extradition case.

However, no date for an extradition hearing itself has yet been scheduled, Canadian justice department officials were quoted as saying. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The council came out swinging at the Canadian Food Price Report released earlier this month, calling the report misleading and noting that demand for meat is “only” set to fall two per cent. It went on to say that any drop in price was due to increased global supply — rather than decreased demand.

Interestingly, however, the council’s response then goes on to support the basic premise.

“Statistics Canada data shows that meat consumption by Canadians has decreased steadily between 2004 to 2015 — and not suddenly because of any specific dietary trends,” it says in a release.

In fact, there are three trends in play that are proving hugely disruptive to the livestock sector.

Consumers in traditional big meat-eating countries, mainly in the industrialized economies, are indisputably leaning towards smaller portions and eating meat less often. Health-care professionals and government guidelines support this move.

The irony is this has been occurring at the same time as the industry has focused on producing bigger animals that grow faster in the name of efficiency.

Secondly, the number of non-meat protein alternatives is surging, ranging from plant-based options to insect protein. Dining these days has become all about the experience, so people are looking for new things to try. These non-meat options are competing for the same dietary space and food dollar.

The fast-food chain A&W, which got heaps of abuse from beef producers for differentiating within the meat sphere with burgers that were raised without the use of growth hormones and routine use of antibiotics, is now a market leader in introducing a non-meat burger that tastes better than a lot of burgers. Demand has exceeded its ability to supply it.

So beef producers who promoted boycotting the company because it was serving beef can now watch their customers eat burgers made from ingredients produced by their grain-farming neighbours. Touché.

Thirdly, the remaining market for meat is becoming fragmented along ethical lines that will increase costs of production.

The Nourish 2019 Trend Report calls it the rise of the “conscious carnivore” and “ethical protein.” The report, produced by the Toronto-based Nourish Network, a marketing and communication service focused on food and agriculture, cites research that found the top-three drivers are animal welfare, environment and health.

“Consumer concern about the humane treatment of farm animals has increased from 40 per cent in 2017 to 49 per cent in 2018. The same research shows that, “while six in 10 Canadians agree they would consume meat, milk, and eggs IF farm animals are treated humanely, less than one-third feel they ARE treated humanely,” it says.

The proportion of vegetarians and vegans continues to rise but the more significant impact on meat demand will come from so-called flexitarians, a much bigger cohort of consumers choosing to eat meat more selectively.

However, they are still customers, so the industry must tread carefully. Meat producers can criticize vegetarians all they like and not lose a customer. Attack your customer’s choices and you risk driving them away.

Ethical eating is all about values — some of which are rooted in science and some of which are simply preference. The push by major buyers, including McDonald’s as of this week, to reduce the industry’s dependence on antibiotics is a no-brainer; the rise of antibiotic resistance is a well-documented concern.

The backlash against growth hormones is more nuanced. Some won’t accept them, yet there is no evidence to suggest they are unsafe, and they do reduce the industry’s environmental footprint.

The Nourish authors say it remains to be seen how consumers will respond to some of the non-meat products in the pipeline that look and “bleed” like the real thing.

“Will vegans dismiss it because they see it as meat, while meat eaters dismiss it because they see it as not real?” they write.

For the livestock sector, figuring out what to do about all this is a bit like navigating quicksand. Rather than thrashing about, it needs to step back and consider how it can stay afloat in a market that’s shifting in unpredictable ways.

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The pact aims to eliminate tariffs on industrial and farm products across an 11-nation bloc whose trade totaled $356.3 billion last year (all figures US$).

This week’s compromise saves member nations from having to renegotiate the ambitious trade pact to accommodate the New Zealand government’s demands for firm measures to rein in housing prices.

It also brings member countries closer to an important victory in support of free trade to be finalized at an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit next week in Vietnam’s central city of Danang.

“The momentum towards (an agreement) at the meeting in Danang has significantly increased,” said Japan’s chief TPP negotiator, Kazuyoshi Umemoto.

Negotiators gathered for three days in Urayasu, just east of Tokyo, to narrow down which terms of the original 12-nation deal to suspend, so as to salvage the pact at the Vietnam summit.

Canada though played down the chances of any kind of formal deal next week, citing the need to ensure the provisions in a new TPP treaty would not cause problems at ongoing talks to update the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement. The NAFTA talks are due to wrap up next March.

“We’re moving quite expeditiously but it’s probably going to take a little longer, so as for a signature (next week) — that’s highly optimistic,” said an Ottawa source familiar with the government’s position.

‘Competitive advantage’

Canadian farm groups have pressed their officials for a deal that would help them expand market access to Japan and the other TPP countries, including Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam.

Among other TPP nations, Canada already has free trade pacts in place with Chile, Peru and, through NAFTA, Mexico.

“Canada’s pork producers request that the government of Canada work to ensure a TPP-11 agreement is implemented without jeopardizing the negotiated outcomes on market access that were agreed to in the original TPP agreement,” Canadian Pork Council chair Rick Bergmann, a producer from Steinbach, Man., said in a release Tuesday.

A TPP-11 deal would give Canadian canola “a competitive advantage over competing oilseed products entering TPP countries, such as U.S. soybean oil into Japan,” the Canola Council of Canada said Tuesday in a separate release.

The Canadian Meat Council on Wednesday said a TPP-11 deal would help boost Canadian meat exports to Japan by $500 million.

Without quick implementation of a deal, the council added, Canada “risks losing a critical competitive advantage to other large exporters such as the European Union.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who was sworn in last week, has announced plans to ban foreign home purchases that should curb speculation without forcing TPP countries to renegotiate the pact.

Japan hopes the deal, which links 11 countries with a combined GDP of $12.4 trillion, can show other nations it is able to champion free trade.

It could also help Japan resist U.S. pressure for a two-way trade pact, which is likely to come up when U.S. President Donald Trump visits, from Sunday until Tuesday, for a summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The TPP pact was thrown into doubt when Trump pulled the U.S. out in January to prioritize protecting jobs. New Zealand and Vietnam subsequently pushed to renegotiate it, but countries have been able to narrow their differences in the final stretch.

— Reporting for Reuters by Kaori Kaneko and Stanley White in Urayasu and David Ljunggren in Ottawa. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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