A quiet notice in the August 1 Canada Gazette opens the formal public comment window on a Canada-Türkiye free trade agreement, and buried inside it is a steel quota question Ottawa has not yet answered
OTTAWA, August 3, 2026
Global Affairs Canada published a notice in Part I of the Canada Gazette on Saturday, August 1, 2026, consulting Canadians on future trade negotiations with Türkiye. It occupies a few paragraphs under Government notices in Volume 160, Number 31, and it is the least dramatic trade document Ottawa produced last week. It may also be one of the more consequential.
The notice converts a leaders’ announcement into a legal process. On July 7, on the margins of the NATO Summit in Ankara, Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the launch of free trade agreement negotiations between Canada and Türkiye. Under Canada’s policy on transparency in trade negotiations, the government must consult the public before tabling positions, and the Gazette notice is how that obligation is discharged. Businesses, workers, civil society organisations, provincial and territorial governments and Indigenous groups now have a defined window to tell Ottawa what they want out of the agreement and what they need protected.
For Canadian importers and exporters, the notice matters for a simple reason. This is the point at which sectoral exclusions, tariff staging, rules of origin and quota arrangements are shaped. By the time a negotiating round convenes, the Canadian position is largely fixed. Comment now or accept the outcome later.
How the file got here
The Canada-Türkiye track has moved quickly by the standards of Canadian trade policy. In early June 2026, Turkish Trade Minister Ömer Bolat and Canadian International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu issued a Joint Ministerial Statement on Economic Partnership announcing the launch of exploratory discussions toward a comprehensive free trade agreement. That statement, in the language of trade officials, is the scoping stage: both sides test whether there is enough overlap to justify the expense of a negotiation.
One month later the leaders converted exploration into commitment. The July 7 joint statement issued from Ankara said the two countries were taking the next step by formally announcing the launch of negotiations toward a comprehensive, modern and mutually beneficial agreement. Closer economic cooperation, the statement said, will support economic growth, support job creation, enhance competitiveness, strengthen supply chains, and help businesses succeed in an increasingly dynamic global economy. Technical teams from both countries would, in the coming months, undertake the necessary work to define the scope and ambition of the agreement and prepare for the first round.
Sidhu has been more concrete in public than the joint statements have been. He has described the agreement as unlocking opportunities for Canadian industry in clean energy, aerospace and mining, and has said Türkiye is very interested in CANDU nuclear reactor technology as it pursues energy diversification. Nuclear is an unusual anchor for a Canadian trade negotiation and it points to a deal that is as much about industrial partnership as about tariff lines.
The Gazette notice on Saturday is the third step in that sequence and the first one addressed to Canadians rather than to Turks.
The numbers underneath
The commercial relationship is modest and lopsided. In 2024, two way merchandise trade between Canada and Türkiye exceeded 4.3 billion dollars, according to Global Affairs Canada. Canadian merchandise exports totalled 1.3 billion dollars while imports from Türkiye came to 3.1 billion. Canada runs a merchandise deficit of roughly 1.8 billion dollars with Türkiye, which is unusual for a Canadian trading relationship of this size and which will shape how the negotiation is received domestically.
The composition tells the story more clearly than the totals. Canada’s top exports to Türkiye in 2024 were lentils and chickpeas at 393 million dollars, iron and steel waste and scrap at 167 million dollars, and soybeans at 113 million dollars. Canada’s top imports from Türkiye were flat rolled iron sheet products at 203 million dollars, tugboats at 128 million dollars and pharmaceutical products at 107 million dollars.
Read that list again and the shape of the negotiation becomes visible. Canada sells Türkiye pulses, oilseeds and scrap metal. Türkiye sells Canada finished steel, ships and medicines. Canada is, in this relationship, closer to a resource supplier than a manufacturer, and the agreement’s value to Canada depends heavily on whether market access improvements in agriculture and in services can offset a further opening to Turkish industrial goods.
Investment has been moving the wrong way. The stock of Canadian direct investment in Türkiye, concentrated in mining, fell from 1 billion dollars in 2022 to 420 million dollars in 2023. A trade agreement typically includes investment protection chapters designed to reverse exactly that kind of decline, and Canadian mining companies are likely to be among the most engaged participants in the consultation.
The relationship also has depth beyond the trade statistics. Canada is home to a Turkish diaspora community of more than 65,000, concentrated in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Hamilton, Calgary and Edmonton. The two countries are NATO allies with a history of joint operations including the Kosovo Force and the NATO Mission in Iraq, and they have run a Joint Economic and Trade Committee since its first meeting in Istanbul in 2019.
The steel problem nobody has addressed
Here is the question the Gazette notice does not raise and the consultation must.
Canada currently operates a tariff rate quota regime on steel mill products, extended in June 2026 by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne for a further year to June 27, 2027. Under that regime, quota levels for partners without a free trade agreement with Canada are set at 20 per cent of their 2024 volumes. Partners with a free trade agreement in force get 75 per cent. Imports above the quota face a 50 per cent tariff.
Türkiye is currently a non free trade agreement partner. Its largest single export to Canada is flat rolled iron sheet product. A Canada-Türkiye free trade agreement, once in force, would move Türkiye from the 20 per cent bucket to the 75 per cent bucket, multiplying its permitted duty free steel access by a factor of nearly four before the 50 per cent over quota rate bites.
That is not a technical footnote. Canada built the steel tariff rate quota regime specifically to prevent trade diversion from American protectionism from overwhelming domestic steel producers. Türkiye is one of the world’s larger steel exporters and has been a recurring subject of trade remedy action in multiple jurisdictions. Moving it into the preferential quota tier while the diversion pressure that justified the quota regime is still intensifying would require a deliberate policy decision, and there is no public indication that Ottawa has made one.
The Canadian steel industry will raise this in the consultation. It should. Whether the negotiators have an answer is the question worth watching, and the range of possible answers is narrow: exclude steel from the agreement entirely, phase Turkish access in over a long transition, write a safeguard specific carve out into the text, or accept the quota upgrade and rely on anti-dumping law to police the outcome. Each of those choices has a constituency and none of them is costless.
Diversification as doctrine
The Türkiye consultation does not stand alone. It is one item in a diversification programme that has accelerated sharply since the collapse of the predictable Canada-United States trading relationship.
Nine days before the Gazette notice, on July 24, Sidhu and Ecuadorian Minister of Production, Foreign Trade and Investments Luis Jaramillo signed the Canada-Ecuador Free Trade Agreement. That deal will allow 99.6 per cent of Ecuador’s exportable goods to enter Canada duty free once in force, giving more than 600 Ecuadorian products tariff free access including bananas, cacao, shrimp, tropical fruits and vegetables, with preferential treatment extending to flowers, tuna preparations, textiles, footwear and cosmetics. Canada protected 227 sensitive agricultural products, including rice, corn, milk, meat and sugar. The agreement covers goods, services, investment, electronic commerce, labour, environment, Indigenous peoples and dispute resolution.
Behind Ecuador and Türkiye sits a queue. Global Affairs Canada ran consultations in December 2025 on potential agreements with India, the United Arab Emirates and Thailand and on Mercosur, with comments due in late January 2026. A Philippines consultation preceded those. The Canada Gazette notice of August 1 also, separately, reflects a government machinery that has turned trade negotiation from an occasional event into a standing production line.
The strategic logic is straightforward and has been stated openly by the Carney government. Canada sends roughly three quarters of its merchandise exports to a single customer whose tariff policy has become unpredictable. Reducing that concentration is a decades long project, and no combination of Ecuador, Türkiye, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates will meaningfully displace the American market in this decade. But diversification is not primarily about volume. It is about optionality, and about the negotiating leverage that comes from having somewhere else to go.
The August 19 shadow
It is impossible to read the Türkiye notice without reference to what happens in sixteen days.
On July 20, President Donald Trump signed three proclamations under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, imposing an additional 50 per cent ad valorem tariff on specified Canadian products in response to alleged Canadian discrimination against American commerce in motor vehicles, alcoholic beverages and dairy. The duties take effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time on August 19, 2026. The United States Trade Representative estimates the three proclamations collectively cover nearly 20 billion dollars in Canadian imports across hundreds of eight digit tariff classifications.
The detail that has most alarmed Canadian exporters is that the tariffs apply regardless of whether a good qualifies for preferential treatment under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. Holland & Knight, in a July 29 client alert, described this as a significant departure from other Canada tariff regimes and noted that this marks the first time Section 338 has ever been used to impose tariffs, raising legal questions likely to be tested in the United States Court of International Trade. Goods already subject to Section 232 restrictions are exempt, as are qualifying civil aircraft, and energy, potash, fish and certain critical minerals are not on the lists.
Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc travelled to Washington in late July with Canada’s chief trade negotiator Janice Charette for meetings aimed at avoiding the August 19 imposition. Prime Minister Carney has said Canada stands ready to engage intensively and that everything is on the table if no agreement is reached, while declining to announce retaliatory measures. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has pushed publicly for a tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar response.
Against that backdrop, a consultation notice about Türkiye reads as something other than routine administration. It is a signal, aimed partly at Canadian business and partly at Washington, that Ottawa is building alternatives.
Stakeholder perspectives
Canadian agriculture is the most obvious beneficiary and the most likely enthusiastic participant in the consultation. Türkiye is already a significant buyer of Canadian pulses, and lentils and chickpeas alone accounted for 393 million dollars of Canadian exports in 2024. Pulse Canada and the grain sector will want tariff elimination and, equally important, disciplines on the non tariff measures and import licensing requirements that have historically made Turkish market access unpredictable.
The nuclear and clean energy sector has the largest upside. If Türkiye’s stated interest in CANDU technology translates into procurement, the value dwarfs anything in the current merchandise trade statistics. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, AtkinsRéalis and the supply chain around them have an obvious stake in the investment and government procurement chapters.
Canadian steel producers have the clearest reason for concern, for the quota reasons set out above. The sector has spent two years lobbying successfully for tariff rate quotas, safeguards and anti-dumping enforcement, and an agreement that upgrades a major steel exporter’s access to the Canadian market cuts directly against that work.
Mining will focus on investment protection. The decline in Canadian direct investment stock in Türkiye from 1 billion dollars to 420 million dollars in a single year is the kind of number that investment chapters are written to address, and Canadian mining companies operating in Türkiye will want dispute settlement provisions with real teeth.
Labour and civil society organisations will scrutinise the labour and environment chapters. The Ecuador agreement’s inclusion of chapters on labour, environment and Indigenous peoples sets a template, and Canadian unions will expect at minimum the same architecture in a Türkiye deal, along with enforceable commitments rather than best efforts language.
Economic impact analysis
Modelling a Canada-Türkiye agreement is an exercise in modest numbers. On a 4.3 billion dollar two way relationship, even an optimistic estimate of trade creation adds a few hundred million dollars of annual bilateral flow. Against Canada’s roughly 1.5 trillion dollar annual merchandise trade, that is a rounding error.
The sectoral effects are more meaningful than the aggregate. For Canadian pulse growers, Türkiye is a top five market and tariff elimination materially affects margins in Saskatchewan and Alberta. For a Canadian nuclear supply chain seeking export orders, a single CANDU commitment would be transformative. For Canadian steel producers, a quota upgrade for a major exporter is a real competitive threat. Trade agreements of this scale are not macroeconomic events. They are sectoral ones, and the politics of ratification are decided by the sectors that lose rather than by the aggregate that gains.
There is also a timing consideration that businesses frequently underestimate. The July 7 statement says technical teams will define scope and prepare for a first round in the coming months. Canadian free trade agreements typically take two to four years from launch of negotiations to signature, and a further one to two years from signature to entry into force. The Canada-Ecuador agreement, signed on July 24, still requires each country to complete its domestic process before it takes effect. Any Canadian business planning around Turkish market access should be thinking about 2029 or 2030, not 2027.
Implications for importers, exporters and Canadian businesses
The immediate action item is participation. The Gazette notice sets out how to submit views, and the window will not stay open indefinitely. Submissions that identify specific tariff lines, specific non tariff barriers and specific quantified commercial effects carry far more weight in this process than general statements of support or opposition. Businesses that want a sensitive product excluded should say so now, in writing, with numbers.
Importers of Turkish goods should understand that an agreement, when it eventually arrives, will bring rules of origin obligations alongside tariff relief. Preferential access is only as valuable as an importer’s ability to document origin, and Turkish supply chains draw heavily on inputs from the European Union and from third countries. The rules of origin negotiation will determine whether the tariff benefit is usable in practice.
Exporters should map their Turkish opportunity now rather than after signature. Trade commissioner service resources in Ankara and Istanbul are available today, and the market intelligence gathered during a consultation period is more useful than the same intelligence gathered after positions have hardened.
Every Canadian business should also hold the Türkiye file in proportion. Sixteen days from now, a 50 per cent duty lands on nearly 20 billion dollars of Canadian exports to the country that buys three quarters of what Canada sells. That is the emergency. Türkiye is the hedge. Ottawa is right to be building hedges, and Canadian businesses would be wrong to mistake a hedge for a solution.
What a consultation submission should contain
Officials who process trade consultations describe a consistent pattern: most submissions are too general to be usable. A brief that says a sector supports expanded trade with Türkiye tells a negotiator nothing they can carry into a room. A brief that names a Harmonized System subheading, states the current applied Turkish tariff, quantifies the Canadian export volume foregone and proposes a staging category is a brief that changes a negotiating position.
For offensive interests, meaning things a Canadian business wants from Türkiye, the elements are tariff lines and applied rates, current and potential export volumes, identified non tariff barriers such as licensing regimes, standards conformity requirements or customs valuation practices, and any services or investment restrictions encountered on the ground. Concrete examples of a shipment held, a tender lost or a licence refused carry disproportionate weight.
For defensive interests, meaning protection a Canadian business wants preserved, the elements are the tariff lines at risk, the import volume and price trends from Türkiye and from third countries, the domestic production and employment associated with those lines, and a specific request: full exclusion, a long staging period, a tariff rate quota, or a bilateral safeguard mechanism. Vague warnings about unfair competition are easy to discount. Documented price undercutting is not.
Provincial governments have a distinct role and generally file separately. Because a modern Canadian agreement touches government procurement, professional services licensing, alcohol distribution and other areas of provincial jurisdiction, provincial submissions shape chapters that federal negotiators cannot deliver alone. Businesses with provincial regulatory exposure should engage their provincial trade ministries as well as Global Affairs Canada.
Indigenous organisations and rights holders are consulted separately and the Ecuador agreement’s dedicated Indigenous peoples chapter indicates the template Canada now brings to negotiations. Businesses operating on or near Indigenous territory in mining or energy should expect that chapter to appear in the Türkiye text as well.
What to watch
Three markers will indicate whether this negotiation is serious. The closing date of the consultation and the volume of submissions, which will signal domestic engagement. The scheduling of a first negotiating round, which the July 7 statement placed in the coming months without further specificity. And any public statement from Finance or Global Affairs on how a Türkiye agreement would interact with the steel tariff rate quota regime, which is the single most consequential unresolved question in the file.