Last week the European Union and Japan announced they have reached a free trade agreement in principle.

Brian Innes, the President of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, says Canada is losing ground to nations like Australia that already have free trade agreements with Japan and word that Japan and Europe have reach tentative deal accelerates the need for Canada reach an agreement that would involve Japan.

Brian Innes-Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance

It's certainly time that we got right to it.

From a Canadian perspective it's a little like getting ready to watch a train wreck when other countries have access to Japan that we don't.

Japan is such a high value market for Canadian agriculture, it's so critical that we have competitive access in that market and with Europe now signaling that they may have an agreement and Canada not having an agreement that could be really bad news for our sectors that export where Europe could fill that market with better access.

Pork is a prime example.

Clearly we have a globally competitive pork industry but it succeeds because we've got competitive access with other countries.

The Danes are also major pork exporters in the world as are other European pork producers.

If they have better access to Japan than we have, that puts us at a disadvantage which means we get less value for our product or the Europeans beat us out of the market.

The prospect of losing access to Japan is a really serious one for Canadian agriculture and so now, more than ever, we really need to get an agreement with Japan and the TPP agreement that has already been agreed to by Japan and Canada is a great place to start.

Mr Innes says the fact that that key countries, including Japan, New Zealand and Australia have indicated they want to move the TPP forward without the United States provides an important opportunity.