Canada Must Accelerate Digital Trade Pact Membership to Shape Global Rules

Three years ago, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore launched an agreement that barely registered on the international radar. The Digital Economy Partnership Agreement was designed to tackle a problem that traditional trade deals had largely ignored: how to govern commerce that happens entirely online, how to move data across borders safely, and how to build systems people could actually trust. By early 2022, the agreement was beginning to attract serious attention. Countries were lining up to join—including China. Canada had signaled interest more than a year earlier, but the file had stalled. The case for moving faster had just become urgent.

The DEPA addresses something fundamental about how the world economy actually works now. A growing share of global commerce either happens digitally or depends on digital platforms to function. The old trade frameworks, even the ones with digital chapters bolted on, were not built for an economy where value flows from data and intangible assets rather than from shipping physical goods. DEPA was designed from the ground up to handle three things: making digital trade seamless from end to end, enabling data to move across borders in trusted ways, and building confidence in the digital systems themselves. It went well beyond what bilateral digital economy agreements between individual countries had managed to achieve.

The real difficulty was not technical. The internet's foundational architecture—domain names, electronic signatures, the legal and technical scaffolding that made e-commerce possible—had been worked out decades ago. The trillion-dollar e-commerce system that emerged from the World Wide Web's launch in 1990 proved that the world could solve those problems. What remained unsolved, and what made the conversation genuinely hard, was how to divide the wealth that digital technologies generate. Questions about data ownership, intellectual property capture, algorithmic bias, privacy, competition, and national security had no settled answers. And until now, that conversation had been dominated by the largest states and the biggest multinational corporations. Smaller countries had barely been heard.

This was where DEPA's origins mattered. It was not launched by the United States, the European Union, or China—the three powers most likely to write rules in their own interest. It came from three countries with relatively modest economies. That made it something rare: a chance for smaller nations to help shape the framework before the major players locked in their preferences. If DEPA eventually became the template for a much larger digital trade agreement, possibly even at the WTO level, then getting in early was not a luxury. It was essential.

Canada's position was particularly strong. The country had already committed to most of DEPA's provisions through the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the CPTPP. Joining would mean agreeing to rules already in force domestically. More importantly, Canada had learned a hard lesson from joining the CPTPP late in the process, after the major issues had already been settled by others. The same mistake could not be repeated. Consultations for DEPA membership had begun in early 2021 but had gone nowhere. Accelerating them was not just advisable—it was overdue.

There was another layer to consider. Most of the actual regulation of the digital economy was happening outside trade negotiations entirely. Standards, laws, and policies were being written in regulatory forums that had nothing to do with trade agreements. But those regulations could reshape the balance of benefits in trade deals, just as trade commitments could constrain what governments could do in other areas. The world needed a new kind of forum that could bring all that work together—trade rules, regulatory standards, technical standards, and policy frameworks—and make sure they reinforced each other rather than pulling in different directions. DEPA could be that forum, or it could be the seed from which such a forum grew.

The skeptics might point out that DEPA was created by three small economies and wonder why Canada should rush to join something so modest in origin. But those three countries had also helped create what became the CPTPP. What starts small can become global and enormously influential. Canada had the chance to be part of that from the beginning, to help shape the rules that would govern digital commerce for decades. The window for that kind of influence was closing. It was time to move.