ASEAN-Canada Forum 2008
About the Publication
On 25–26 November 2008, the Regional Economic Studies Programme of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Singapore organized a forum on “Regional Economic Integration: ASEAN and Canadian Perspectives”. The forum gathered Southeast Asian and Canadian experts to focus on common issues related to regional economic integration. The broad objective of the forum was to promote research partnerships and build stronger economic, political and socioeconomic linkages between ASEAN and Canadian institutions.
The forum started with a keynote address by Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Thereafter, the sessions examined the various aspects of regional integration — trade and investment issues, institutional development, governance and accountability, different approaches to dispute resolution, winners and losers in economic integration, labour mobility issues, etc.
The forum concluded that fundamentally the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were two different kinds of agreements. First, while NAFTA focused entirely on trade, the scope of AFTA was much broader and went beyond issues of trade and investment alone. Secondly, NAFTA was a lightly institutionalized regional trade agreement. There was no formal institutional or policy development. For ASEAN, a secretariat was created in 1976, and expanded and strengthened in 1992, the year of AFTA’s creation. Third, the dispute settlement mechanism system in ASEAN was different from that of NAFTA. The ASEAN provisions were scattered over a number of documents, and cover both trade/investment disputes and other (for example, political or territorial) disputes, while the NAFTA provisions were contained in a single document and could be applied only to trade and investment-related matters. Finally, although many studies have stated that trade liberalization is a win-win proposition; the distribution of costs and benefits is uneven. In the case of Canada, short-run gains in efficiency from expanded trade can be identified, but it is harder to determine longer-term dynamic gains. On the other hand, in the case of ASEAN, it is still grappling with the issue of the development divide, especially since the admission of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
The forum’s programme and a list of the names and contact data of the participants are at the end of this report.
The report begins with a brief summary of the important observations made during the discussions. This is followed by papers presented during the forum. We hope that the summary and the papers will help policy-makers, the private sector and the interested public in understanding the regional integration process both in AFTA and in NAFTA.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
I. Regional Economic Integration: ASEAN and Canadian Perspectives
• Summary of the Forum
II. Background Papers
1. AFTA–NAFTA: Trade and Investment Issues
by John Whalley
2. Trade and Investment Issues in ASEAN Economic Integration
by Myrna S. Austria
3. Institutional Development in ASEAN
by Rodolfo C. Severino
4. Governance Issues in NAFTA
by Paul J. Davidson
5. Different Approaches to Dispute Resolution under ASEAN
by Locknie Hsu
6. Dispute Resolution under NAFTA: Evolution and Stagnation
by J. Anthony VanDuzer
7. Winners and Losers in ASEAN Economic Integration: A Perspective from Vietnam
by Vo Tri Thanh
8. Winners and Losers in International Economic Integration: The Distributional Effects of NAFTA
by Dan Ciuriak
9. Cross-border Labour Migration in ASEAN: Issues and Challenges
by Chia Siow Yue
10. Labour Market Integration within NAFTA
by Don J. DeVoretz
Annex I: Programme of the Forum
Annex II: List of Participants
Annex III: Rules-based Governance
Reproduced from ASEAN-Canada Forum 2008 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at <http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg>.
