International law is a complex set of rules that are made by countries for countries to follow, and these rules make the world tick. They regulate everything from the food we eat... to war. So, how do countries, which often have different and sometimes competing interests, come to agree on what these rules are? Let's unravel how international law is made. There are several sources of international law. We're going to focus on the two major ones - customary law and treaties. Let's start with customary law. So, there must be a practice that many countries consistently do, and that practice is accepted as law, even if it isn't written down. It's kind of like a social norm, like take your shoes off when you enter someone's home. An example of customary international law is the idea of rescuing people at sea. Any ship that comes across people in distress is obligated to provide help. Or take another example: diplomatic immunity - the idea that diplomats can't be prosecuted with a crime while they're on the job. Both of these were accepted as customary law for years before they were written into a treaty.

The second major source of international law are treaties, agreements, or conventions with official names and titles. These can be negotiated bilaterally, meaning between two countries, or multilaterally, meaning between several countries. Sometimes, multilateral agreements are negotiated through organizations such as the United Nations. In fact, one of many jobs the UN does is to keep a library or collection of treaties, and that's so everyone knows which countries signed which treaties and what those treaties say. Okay, so, how are treaties made? That is a long, complicated, multi-step process. And the first step is finding an issue that needs to be sorted out through a treaty. It could be a common problem to solve, let's say ozone depletion, or freedom of navigation, or protecting Antarctica, you name it. Or it could be settling some kind of a potential dispute, if countries have trade barriers, for example, and eventually, they want to arrive at a place where those trade barriers are removed. So, the first thing is to identify the issue. Then, comes negotiation. This is the part where interested countries decide what goes into the treaties, literally what the text of the treaty will be. Once there is agreement that there is an issue, negotiations will be launched. Issues might arise as to who should participate in these negotiations. Is this something that requires universal involvement or is it only a regional issue? Here in Canada, cabinet authorizes the start of this process and the Minister of Foreign Affairs is responsible for negotiating international treaties on our behalf. Well, that's the case on paper at least. In practice, other departments also carry out negotiations, depending on what the treaty is about, with the supervision of Global Affairs Canada. Cabinet is responsible for appointing negotiators and giving them guidelines for negotiations. Once a treaty is negotiated, countries will sign it, showing they support the text of the agreement. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs have the power to sign international treaties for Canada. No more changes should be made to the text of an agreement after it's signed. Now, what comes next is a step called implementation. What that means is that treaties must be reflected in Canadian law. You will find implementing legislation sometimes scattered over different types of domestic legislation. Sometimes, some of the subject matter might be provincial jurisdiction, some of it might be federal jurisdiction, so it can be quite complicated. In some cases, that involves either changing existing domestic law to make it consistent with a treaty or creating a brand new law. But sometimes, a treaty is already reflected in domestic Canadian law, in which case, no further action is needed. That would take us to the next step: ratification. Ratification is when cabinet approves the treaty, and that makes it legally binding on a country, meaning a country is obligated to follow it. When a treaty is ratified by Canada, when Canada opts in and binds itself, then that treaty is binding on Canada under international law. The last step is a treaty coming into force on an agreed-upon day. That happens after all parties have ratified it. Countries have to abide by the terms of the agreement from that day forward.

Okay, so, we outlined the steps. Now, let's take a look at an example. Like CUSMA - the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. It's the successor to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA came into force on January 1st, 1994. In 2016, then US presidential candidate Donald Trump called the agreement... The worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere. He argued that the treaty, which, at that point, was over 20 years old, needed to be renegotiated, and negotiations for NAFTA's replacement began on August 16, 2017. Canada's team was led by then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland. And after months of negotiations, all three countries signed the agreement on November 30, 2018. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. The new treaty, CUSMA, needed implementation legislation here at home. A bill entitled "An Act to Implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States" be now read a first time and be printed. That bill passed on March 13, 2020. Canada officially ratified CUSMA a few weeks later, and the treaty finally came into force on July 1st, 2020, with an expiration date set to 2036. The treaty also allows the countries to renegotiate the deal before it expires, which would start this process all over again.