There is a ticking time bomb at the heart of the North American economy. And this is the year that it begins to detonate.

Over the past several months, Canadian businesses and analysts have been pressuring the federal government to better prepare for the mandated renegotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) that regulates trade and economic activity among the three North American countries.

Article 34.7 of the pact effectively commits the three countries to undertake a review of the new agreement every six years, in 2026 (the agreement went into force in 2020).

This might not seem like a big deal. Canada has negotiated many trade agreements, and a regular review of our most important trade agreement may seem reasonable.

But CUSMA is no regular trade agreement, in large part because this highly unusual review process undermines the very security and stability that trade agreements are supposed to provide.

Read more: The winners and losers in the new NAFTA

In 2018, in the depths of the first Donald Trump presidency, Canada, the U.S. and Mexico renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that had governed continental economic relations since 1994.

The agreement — called the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) in the U.S., the Tratado entre México, Estados Unidos y Canadá (T-MEC) in Mexico and CUSMA in........

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