2016 has been quite the year for Canada’s relationship with Europe. Brexit and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) have fundamentally changed the course of Europe. What will 2017 and beyond offer?

Join our expert panel for three views of the future of Canada’s relationship with Europe.

Hear from Mel Cappe (former Clerk of the Privy Council and Ambassador to the UK) who will share his experience of being Canada’s top representative in the UK. 

Stefania Szabo, Consul General of Hungary, Toronto, Ontario, Canada will give a European view on how Canada can work with Europe.

Mark Warner, an expert on international trade law, will give the perspective of Canada’s business relationship with Europe now that CETA has been signed.

Biographies

Mel Cappe is Professor in the School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto. From 2006-2011 he was President of the Institute for Research on Public Policy. Prior to that for four years he was High Commissioner for Canada to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Before that he served as Clerk of the Privy Council, Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Public Service. Earlier in his career he held senior economic and policy positions in the Departments of Finance and Industry. He was Deputy Secretary to the Treasury Board, Deputy Minister of the Environment, Deputy Minister of Human Resources Development, Deputy Minister of Labour and Chairman of the Employment Insurance Commission. He is a Commissioner on Canada’ Ecofiscal Commission. He sits on several non-profit Boards. He has graduate degrees in Economics from the Universities of Western Ontario and Toronto and honourary doctorates from both. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and recipient of the Queen’s Diamond and Golden Jubilee Medals 

Stefania Szabo is the Consul General of Hungary in Toronto. She has been the Consul General since August 2013. Before that she was Director General at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hungary in Budapest and was an economic counsellor at the Embassy of Hungary in Tel Aviv. She is also currently the Vice President of the Association of Hungarian Public Servants, Member of the Ethics Committee.

Mark Warner is an Ontario and New York attorney specializing in competition, trade and investment law. He has practiced law in leading law firms in Toronto, Washington, New York and Brussels, has served as counsel to the OECD in Paris, and is a former Director of Legal Services for Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade and Ministry of Research & Innovation. In that role, Mark led Ontario’s legal team in the CETA negotiations and advised on various NAFTA Chapter 11 investor-state disputes. Mark is a past Chair of the International and Economics Committees of the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law as well as a member of the Section’s Task Forces on Competition Policy and NAFTA and Antitrust in the Global Economy. He is also co-author of a leading Canadian trade law treatise. Mark has been listed in the Euromoney / International Financial Law Review Guide to the World’s Leading Competition lawyers and in 2015 was elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.  He earned a BA from McGill, an MA in Economics from the University of Toronto, a JD from Osgoode Hall Law School and an LLM from Georgetown University Law Centre.