Are everyday shoppers most likely to feel the impact if something does progress? Like if this alliance deepens, will we actually see it affect our pocketbooks?

I think that there will certainly be changes.

There's a law in physics that says you cannot change only one thing.

Any associate membership is going to lead to some changes in both Canada and the EU.

It is just very, very difficult to predict precisely what those changes are and whether they will be mostly positive or mostly negative.

I do want to point out, however, that Canada already has well-established trade relations with the EU, and there's already trouble in those relations because we have an agreement called CETA, Canada-European Trade Agreement, that was negotiated, but it has not been ratified for 10 years now.

And so I think that what we're seeing now is a signal from both parties that they do want a closer integration.

How realistic is it to expect the European Union member states to back a deeper, quote-unquote, associate-style arrangement? And what could stall or, dare we say, even sink this in Europe?