Canada, like many trading nations, has legislation that allows the application of safeguard measures to assist domestic producers that have suffered or are threatened by serious injury from increased levels of fairly traded imports. This legislation implements Canada’s rights and obligations under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Safeguards for global safeguard inquiries and measures. In a global safeguard inquiry, the Tribunal looks at the impact of imports of goods from all countries on domestic producers of like or directly competitive goods.

The Tribunal may conduct global safeguard inquiries, exclusion inquiries, mid-term reviews and extension inquiries pursuant to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act (CITT Act), the Canadian International Trade Tribunal Regulations (CITT Regulations) and the Canadian International Trade Tribunal Rules (CITT Rules). The Government may apply safeguard measures in the form of an import surtax pursuant to the Customs Tariff or in the form of a restriction (import quota or tariff-rate quota) pursuant to the Export and Import Permits Act.

The CITT Act also has provisions relating to safeguard inquiries under various bilateral free trade agreements to which Canada is a signatory. These inquiries are referred to as “bilateral safeguard inquiries”. In a bilateral safeguard inquiry, the Tribunal considers the effect of goods imported from one of the countries with which Canada has entered into a bilateral free trade agreement. In principle, the object is to determine whether, as a result of the tariff reductions provided for in the bilateral free trade agreement, goods are imported from the country in question in such increased quantities and under such conditions as to cause or threaten to cause serious injury to domestic producers of like or directly competitive goods. In a bilateral safeguard inquiry, safeguard measures, if applied, are limited to the temporary suspension of tariff reductions or restoration of the most-favoured-nation tariff rates. Measures may be applied for up to three years, followed, in some cases, by a one-year phasing-out period.

Documents (in English) are attatched below: