Despite unresolved trade disputes and irritation over softwood lumber, the members of the COMPAS/FP business panel perceive NAFTA as a boon to Canada. With few exceptions, business leaders see the treaty as providing substantive benefits outweighing normal frustrations. One business leader put it succinctly: “Free trade has been very good for Canada.” Another offered this: “Even with recent disputes like BSE closing the border to cattle, Canada is better off with NAFTA than without it.”

Another business leader contributed a more detailed analysis:
No one ever promised that under NAFTA there were be no trade disputes ("I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.) To even suggest for a moment that this means that NAFTA does not work is very much an ideologically inspired attempt to "throw out the baby with the bath water".

NAFTA has been a tremendous boon to this country and we should be mature enough to expect and accept as inevitable some trade disputes to arise from time to time. This is only a healthy sign of a relationship that is working reasonably well, thank you very much! NAFTA, while not perfect, is one of the pillars of strength of our economy, and in the cold hard light of day, we need it far more than the Americans do.

This business leader encapsulates the position of most on the occasion of the treaty’s 10th anniversary.