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Meanwhile, Canada seems positive towards a free trade deal with Britain. Following a recent meeting between Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Theresa May in Ottawa, the leaders shared optimism the Canada-EU free trade deal, CETA, could morph into a bilateral agreement post-Brexit.

But Hannan, who sat on the Vote Leave campaign committee and appointed its chief executive — “so, in that sense, I started it” — has more in mind.

He and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson launched two weeks ago an Institute for Free Trade. The pro-Brexit think-tank tries to make an “ethical” case for free trade, saying free trade zones do much to alleviate poverty and further social justice.

The U.K. could join NAFTA or form a trilateral agreement with Canada and the U.S., Hannan said. His preference is to join NAFTA and combine this with EFTA — the European Free Trade Association made up of non-EU European states Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Ultimately the deal could bring in the EU, as Hannan sees it.

“We’d be bringing something new to the table,” he said, noting a Canada-U.K.-Australia-New Zealand deal such as that advocated by former Conservative leadership contestant and current foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole has now “in an astonishingly short time” gone from being a new idea to being “quite a mainstream idea.”

Hannan is a longtime Tory with deep ties to Canada’s Conservative party. At the beginning of September, he spoke at the party’s caucus retreat in Winnipeg.

Hannan remains “cheerful” about Brexit, with a formal withdrawal scheduled for the end of March 2019. He said he expects a CETA-style trade deal with the EU should talks falter before the sever.

Any decisions on a U.K. attempt to join NAFTA will inevitably have to wait until the result of trilateral negotiations between Canada, U.S. and Mexico.

• Email: mdsmith@postmedia.com | Twitter: mariedanielles