FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 1996-10-31

Industries Invited to Help Make North America's Standards Compatible

The Standards Council of Canada is inviting Canadian businesses to help set the agenda for the fifth North American Trilateral Standardization Forum, being held in Mexico City, in February 1997.

The Forum gives businesses, standards organizations and governments the opportunity to open up trading channels by reconciling differences in the voluntary standards used in Canada, the United States and Mexico. It also serves as a venue to discuss issues in the rapidly changing field of conformity assessment, an area which includes certification, testing and the registration of quality systems.

Much of the work at the Forum will take place in sectoral workshops. The Standards Council has approached industry associations to determine which sectors would benefit most from taking part, and is also looking for input and participation from individual businesses. A similar process is being conducted in the United States by the American National Standards Institute and in Mexico by the Dirección general de normas and the Mexican National Chamber of Commerce.

The February meeting would be the fifth time the Forum has convened. At its last meeting, in 1994, sectoral workshops were held in the areas of toys, construction products, practices and codes, iron and steel, the environment, textile and apparel, plastic piping, education, dangerous goods packaging, conformity assessment and industrial safety equipment.

For more information, visit the Standards Council's web site at http://www.scc.ca, or contact Gary Clement at (613) 238-3222; fax (613) 995-4564; e-mail [email protected].
 

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