A new commentary argues that Canada’s trade push overlooks the environmental footprint of what it imports, and that sustainability is becoming a condition of market access.

Canada is the world’s 11th-largest importer of agri-food products, bringing in about 88% of the fresh fruit and nuts and 72% of the fresh vegetables it consumes, yet its trade strategy focuses almost entirely on exports. Writing in Policy Options, researchers call this a blind spot: environmental degradation abroad eventually translates into supply disruptions, price spikes and quality failures for Canadian buyers, and much of Canada’s raw-commodity supply comes from regions where trade agreements are thinnest.

With the EU set to bar deforestation-linked imports in December and already pricing carbon at the border, non-compliant goods may be redirected to markets with weaker rules. The signal for exporters is clear: traceability and sustainability are shifting from a “plus” to a condition of market access, and the authors call for capacity-building and shared traceability tools to help suppliers meet them.