The veteran bureaucrat’s 33-year run in government ended in 2021. He eventually resurfaced at GT&Company, a strategic advisory firm founded by longtime politicos Don Guy and Brian Topp. And Verheul recently took on a new title: fellow at the Public Policy Forum, an Ottawa-based think tank.

These aren’t the halcyon days of trade liberalization that brought the world together at the turn of the millennium. Verheul is on a mission to convince policymakers they should think differently about global trade in 2023.

Verheul rarely talks to media, but he sat down for an interview with POLITICO. This is the extended transcript, only lightly edited for length and clarity.

What drives your work at this stage in your career?

The policy side of the work has always interested me the most. That’s where the creativity is. That’s where you’re talking about what can come next. But trade policy at the moment is in a bit of a quiet phase. There’s no big negotiations going on, or big crisis. I’ve become more interested in where trade policy goes from here.

How does it feel to be looking at the trade landscape after this arc of a couple of decades of pretty intense trade negotiations, to have it kind of be a quiet space?

There was never any real phase where things were quiet. Those were kind of the glory years. We did WTO negotiations, we did see the CPTPP, the new NAFTA. We were running at full speed. Now, it’s a little bit different. It’s partly because we’re in this phase of substantially changing trade policy from what it used to be to what it will be. That’s an interesting part. The challenge now is we’ve got to get in front of that. If we watch it go by, we’re not going to influence it that much.

It was an iterative process over those years, as progressive elements of European free trade negotiations informed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the new NAFTA renegotiations. Is whatever happens next a natural extension of that iterative process?

We were feeling the pressures of those kinds of issues, whether it was environment or labor or some of the other issues that were under discussion. We tried to make some progress. But we didn’t make that full commitment to integrating those issues into the trade sphere. It didn’t go as far as it needs to go. We’re in a different world now. It needs to go much further.

Let’s talk about climate as one example, and environment. How did trade agreements not go far enough in integrating that issue?

There wasn’t the same degree of pressure and urgency when we were negotiating those agreements, as I believe there is now. What we tried to do at that point was try to ensure that trade policy didn’t prevent environmental actions from being pursued.

But what we didn’t do was try to address this bigger issue. If a government is taking actions for environmental reasons, in many cases, it’s making itself less competitive than some of the other countries it’s trading with, who may not be doing those kinds of things.

That gets to the issue of today: How do you maintain a proper competitive relationship between countries if one is doing a lot more on the environment than another one is.

Are there lessons to be learned from previous negotiations?

We’re all trying to move toward higher labor standards, at least in the developed world. There’s a strong interest in the developing world to try to move that way as well. But then you get into the complication that at least in part removes a competitive advantage, to some extent, that developing countries have.

When it comes to things like agriculture, we’ve moved from an era where we were trying to manage too much food — food getting dumped on world markets, low prices, how do you deal with that — to an era now where there’s not enough food, and we have to rapidly innovate, in order to put ourselves into a position to be able to feed the world.

We’ve got to turn that whole sector, and the thinking about it from a trade perspective, kind of upside down. That is a significant challenge. It’s obviously an essential one, because we’re talking about actually making sure people have enough food at the end of the day.

You’ve written about Canada playing an influential role in changing the trade discussion by getting like-minded countries onside. Can you talk a bit about the kinds of countries that might be receptive to the kinds of rethinking you’re talking about?

When it becomes an issue of multilateral negotiations, where the world is kind of involved, you always have the big powers: the U.S., EU, China, India to some extent. All of the big players that carry a lot of weight in a negotiation.

And then you have a whole set of countries that are not that powerful, but have a strong interest in trying to influence things. Because like Canada, they have an essential interest in making sure that trade works. The kinds of countries that I’ve been thinking about while going through this process are the same kinds of countries that were involved in negotiations at the WTO that I’ve been involved with. We’re talking about Norway, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Malaysia, Indonesia.

There’s a lot of countries around the world that have an interest and want to engage, but recognize they don’t have that much power on their own to influence things.

How has Canada worked with smaller nations in the past to tangibly force major power trade concessions?

In the WTO agricultural negotiations, there were market access issues, domestic subsidies issues, and export support — export subsidies, export credits, those kinds of things.

In trying to get to how we could design a formula to reduce domestic subsidies, the general approach at the WTO would be we’d have a percentage reduction. We’d all agree we’re going to reduce our subsidies by 50 percent, for example.

But in discussing among this very small group, we proposed that rather than just have everybody reduce the same amount, we’d have a much bigger impact in the world if we had the biggest subsidizers commit to the biggest reductions.

Without the U.S. and the EU in the room, or Japan, we agreed the EU should take the biggest cut. It was 90 percent. Japan would take the second biggest cut. It was 80. The U.S. would take a 70 percent cut, and everybody else on the developed world side would take 60 percent. Developing countries even less. Obviously not proportionate.

You could argue it’s not fair. But it would have the biggest impact in terms of addressing the issue. We developed that internally with a few other countries. Eventually brought it to the U.S. and the EU and Japan and others.

The EU, because it fit their domestic agenda, agreed right away. The U.S. was somewhat reluctant, but because they had a somewhat lower number in our proposal than the Europeans, they figured that they could make that cut. Japan was very reluctant and somewhat unhappy, but recognized they couldn’t oppose it if the U.S. and EU were going to be onboard.

We took a proposal that was inherently against the interests of the bigger players, and managed to convince everyone that was the track to go down. The Doha Round of WTO negotiations eventually collapsed. None of that actually came to pass. But we did have a clear convergence on going that direction.

You’re describing a world where major players act in good faith in a functioning trade system — where the best idea can still win the day. Is that system still intact?

No, I wouldn’t say it is. The benefit of having a multilateral negotiation going on is that you have that kind of structure and atmosphere where other countries are going to talk. There’s always going to be discussions going on, because they’re working on an active, broad negotiation.

When there’s not that kind of negotiation going on, the U.S. and EU are still talking. China is talking to others. All of that is happening among those countries, but there’s not the same dynamic where you get smaller groups of common-minded countries talking.

You really have to make an extra effort to initiate that, given that you’re not all sitting around tables in Geneva on a regular basis. The potential is still there to get that kind of discussion going. It just has to be activated because you don’t have a WTO structure where you can all sit down in the same city in the same place.

Where does a country like Canada start the kinds of conversations you envision?

You have to quietly start talking about an idea, or a set of ideas, with various players to a point where you’re starting to build a bit of a consensus — at least in the small group, and then trying to expand it.

That’s the way it can get traction. If it’s just one country going out there with what might be seen as a wild idea, or something that’s going to create a lot of work, nobody’s gonna pay much attention.

What’s your sense of Canada’s capacity or willingness to do that work?

I haven’t seen a huge amount of appetite just now. I would say that there are some in the bureaucracy who are thinking about these kinds of issues. There are even some at the political level that are giving some thought to these issues. But it’s mainly thinking them through rather than taking what is admittedly a difficult step of trying to see if Canada can actually be out there trying to try to move something forward.

You’ve said you never turned down a stakeholder meeting request. Why?

That was always my approach, because I had wanted to make sure that we had an atmosphere of trust and respect in negotiations. In many negotiation rounds I’ve gone to, whether it was WTO or CETA or the new NAFTA, we would usually get a delegation of often more than 100 stakeholders coming with us.

They expect some kind of contact with negotiators. They expect to understand what’s going on. At the end of the day, we’re not negotiating these agreements for governments. We’re negotiating them for those stakeholders that see a potential benefit in what we might be doing. The only way we do that effectively is we have a detailed understanding of what their interests are, what would help them, what would be negative for them. You don’t get that unless you’re having an ongoing dialogue, and you get a real understanding of what their needs are and what their desires are. But at the same time, as you’re having those conversations, stakeholders get a good sense of what, as a government, your limitations are, what your constraints are in this process.

You start to converge. And at the end of the day, you tend to end up with a strategy that’s going to have buy-in on all sides, which with some minor exceptions, usually was something that worked pretty well. I’ve always felt that gave us a huge advantage in any negotiation.

We were a fairly unified force on the issues. We had an understanding of the issues better than any of our partners. That was the way we could make real progress. A lot of effort.

I would get these requests, often at midnight or past midnight, to meet with stakeholders. But it was the kind of work I felt necessary to get to that point where you have very good relationships and an understanding of what’s going on on both sides.

Was that a common approach?

I’m not aware of anyone that ever consulted as much as we did. When we did the new NAFTA negotiations, I would often get requests from U.S. stakeholders to brief them, because the U.S. officials were not briefing. I gave them briefings regularly. I didn’t think that would do any harm. I thought it could help our own position to explain it.

That feels like a bit of a gift.

Yeah. And I was happy to take it.

A united front on supply management in agriculture, given its political sensitivity in Canada, feels like a feat. How did you work to keep opposing sides together?

I had a very good relationship with the supply managed sector. I had a very good relationship with the exporting sides of our industry. It’s just a matter of spending enough time with them that they understand what your constraints are as a negotiator. Supply management is a government priority. Working within those certain given realities, you tried to figure out the best path forward.

It was the same thing with provinces and territories, because they too had very different issues along the way. We spent a lot of time with provinces and territories. I never turned down any of those invitations either.

At the beginning of negotiations, particularly with the Europeans, but also with the U.S. and Mexico, there’s a bit of hostility. Positions are far apart. But you spend so much time together and so many discussions back and forth. By the end, we were a very cohesive team on the Canadian side — provinces, territories and the federal government.

Did it ever feel like you didn’t live at home during trade negotiations? How much did you sleep during intense periods?

With the new NAFTA negotiations, it was a little bit easier in some respects, because Washington is not that far away. WTO negotiations were the worst, because at times, I think I spent five or six months in Geneva over the course of a year. In CETA, I once spent five weeks in Brussels during the negotiating session.

There wasn’t a lot of sleep during these periods. It would be up and down. There’d be intensive periods and not-so-intensive periods. But certainly, two or three days without sleep was not unusual. I’d be very happy if I got four or five hours at most, a night. Often two or three. It’s a tiring, grueling process.

Pick one: CUSMA, USMCA, .

It was so much easier when we had NAFTA, because there were no specific countries mentioned in the name. It was a very familiar name. People got to know it. It was easy. I think there’s a preference among a lot of people to continue with “New NAFTA,” just because of the simplicity of that compared to having three different names among the three partners.

But I do find “New NAFTA” cumbersome. I’ve said NAFTA, and then corrected myself and said “New NAFTA” a few times. I think it’s confusing. I think it’s an awkward way of saying it. But nobody really seemed to catch on to CUSMA, which is the official legal name of the agreement in Canada. Maybe it just doesn’t have the right ring to it or something. But not a lot of enthusiasm.

It was really the U.S. that got us started down this track, because we hadn’t really had a discussion about what we were going to call this. And then President Trump came out and announced that he was going to be calling it the USMCA. And that stuck on the U.S. side.

That put us in a more difficult position. We couldn’t call it USMCA, because by convention, my legal counsel told me we had to have Canada first in the title. Mexico had a different title. It introduced a lot of unnecessary confusion. It would’ve been so nice to come up with a variation of NAFTA as the name we could all use.

Name a top memory from each major trade negotiation.

I have a number of memories, some of which I’ve been trying to forget. But one of the ones from the new NAFTA discussions — there we go again — was relatively early on. It was a tense atmosphere early on, because the U.S. had all these somewhat outlandish ideas that they were bringing to the table. And there were huge gaps between where we were, where Mexico was, and where the U.S. was.

We had certain elements we were intent on making sure we could negotiate. One of them was the old chapter 19, which has a dispute settlement process for trade remedy issues. This is where we have taken so many softwood lumber cases over the years — and won almost all of them.

We got to the table and the U.S. said, “We don’t even want to talk about that. In fact, we refuse to talk about that issue at the table.” My response to that was, “Well, if you don’t want to talk about an issue that’s of great importance to us, then we don’t want to talk about issues that are of importance to you.” And I shut down the meeting. And we all walked away.

Had a few concerned calls from Ottawa that night, wondering what was going on. But the U.S. obviously had some internal discussions as well. Very early the next morning, I got a call from my U.S. counterpart, and he said, “Fine, we’ll talk about your chapter 19 issues.” In some cases, you do have to go to the mat. And make sure that you have delivered the message that this is an essential issue and we’re not going to let it go.

There’s a chapter 10 now in the agreement.

How about CETA?

During one very tense moment in the CETA negotiations, my EU counterpart and I each had two others with us. We were negotiating in my counterpart’s office — that’s Mauro Petriccione, who unfortunately died of a heart attack last year — but a really great counterpart and a good friend.

We were in his office negotiating over a rather difficult issue. And he was becoming quite upset with me, because I wasn’t showing the kind of flexibility he was looking for. He slammed his books down, and stormed out.

But he stormed out of his own office. It felt a little bit awkward. I figured, well, we’ll just stay here. And he was gone quite a while. Eventually came back. I’m sure he felt a little bit sheepish having to return to his own office, having walked out. And then we got back to work.

And the WTO?

We used to have these negotiations, when we were getting near the end, which were in what’s called the Green Room at the WTO. A fairly small room.

There were maybe 10 or 12 countries to get invited. You usually have a delegation at this point in the negotiations of a minister with some support. But not a lot, maybe two people.

These were expected to be marathon discussions. All night, all the next day. There was never any food. There was very rarely water. And mysteriously, this was in the summer, the air conditioner stopped working. It started to get really warm in that room, because we were all packed in very tightly.

The whole idea, of course, was to make us uncomfortable enough that we’re going to agree to anything just to get out of the room. It probably worked to some extent, but it’s a testament to the requirement that negotiators have to have a lot of patience, a lot of tolerance and be able to go without sleep for long periods of time.