Bank of Nova Scotia President and CEO Rick Waugh today called on government, business and academic leaders to join forces to promote a foreign trade and investment policy that also promises to foster domestic economic growth.

“Governments must lead in building the right policy framework to facilitate international growth because good foreign policy equals good domestic policy,” said Waugh, in an address to the Partnership in International Management (PIM) Conference, at York University’s Schulich School of Business.

“Businesses, governments and universities need to embrace the opportunities of international growth and reject protectionist thinking in all its forms.”

“Today I am concerned about a possible step backward in trade, over the lack of progress of global trade talks and the collapse of the Doha (trade negotiations). But the reality is that, with worldwide multilateral talks stalled, regional, sub-regional and bilateral level agreements are becoming the focus,” added Waugh. “The current failure of multilateral trade talks at a global level will merely slow what is a truly rising and enduring trend. Globalization is not only a reality, it is no longer even a debatable point.”

Using the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as an example, Waugh said the “watershed” agreement has more than doubled – to US$750 billion annually – trade between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

“For the near future, trade within various regions – the Euro zone, Asia and the Americas – will continue to be a key driving force of global economic activity,” said Waugh. “The real growth opportunities today for businesses in North America and South America exist in the Americas and these opportunities are just beginning.”

He said Scotiabank’s positive experience in Mexico reflects how important global operations are to the success of companies and how the Mexican government’s strong trade and foreign investment policies equaled strong domestic policy. It created many jobs in Mexico, added Waugh, while introducing a wide variety of new products and services, as the local banking system became a model for emerging markets.

“Clearly Scotiabank has done well through its investment — about $440 million in net income in 2005 — but so has Mexico and so has Canada,” said Waugh. “Our bank’s confidence in large part was based on a sound policy framework put in place by the governments of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. — specifically NAFTA — and Mexico’s strong support for open markets.”

Canadian investment has already shown a bias toward our hemisphere, he added. Over the last decade the compound average annual growth rate of Canadian investment in Central and South America was 11%. That is 50% higher than the growth in investment in Asia and more than five times the growth of Canadian investment in the European Union, said Waugh.