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The federal government says the safeguards are necessary to prevent a damaging flood of steel from being diverted to Canada as a result of U.S. tariffs. A rise in imports has already occurred in sufficient quantities to cause or threaten to cause injury to domestic firms, Canada says.

But in a submission to the CITT, the European Commission argues that the “vast majority” of critical data proving this has been withheld from trading partners.

“In the present case a lot of information, in particular relating to imports and the economic indicators of the domestic industry, is kept confidential, which makes it completely impossible for the parties to understand the real picture of the situation, which is subject to the Tribunal’s injury assessment,” states the EC, which co-ordinates trade policy for the European Union’s 28 member states.

In separate documents seen by the Financial Post, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Brazil also raise the issue, with Russia saying the lack of data precludes it from formulating “its reasonable position in order to protect the interests of Russian producers and exporters within the framework of this investigation.”

In its notification to the WTO’s Committee on Safeguards in October, Canada said that overall, imports of the seven steel products protected by safeguards rose to 2.87 million tonnes in 2017, from 2.74 million tonnes in 2015 — a 5 per cent increase. It also identified “more recent, significant and sharp” increases in the first quarter of 2018, when overall imports of the products spiked 30 per cent compared to the same period a year earlier.