OTTAWA (Staff) – Canada is leading a world-wide lobby to convince food trading nations that export subsidies should be abolished, a senior federal trade bureaucrat said last week.
Allen Kilpatrick, deputy minister of international trade, told the semi-annual meeting of the Canada Grains Council Oct. 24 that Canada hopes the limits on export subsidies set in new GATT trade rules can be toughened into a ban.
“In the long term, the goal is abolition of all export subsidies in global trade,” he said.
The next major chance to push the campaign will be Dec. 9-11 when leaders of countries from throughout North, Central and South America meet in Miami.
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As a first step, Canada is proposing that export subsidies not be used in the food trade, at least among nations in the Americas.
Kilpatrick said Argentina and several other South American countries support the proposal. Even the Americans have not yet rejected it.
“The key, obviously, is whether the Americans sign on,” he said. “We have had some preliminary discussions with the Americans and they are thinking about it. They haven’t rejected the idea yet, nor have they embraced it.”
U.S. not convinced
When the North American Free Trade Agreement was negotiated, Canada could not convince the Americans to drop their ability to use export enhancement subsidies on sales into Mexico.
Canada, of course, would have to commit to ending its own version of grain export subsidy – the Crow Benefit payments – and members of the Canada Grains Council heard Monday how much that is taken as an assumption.
During an address on grain trade prospects, Canadian Wheat Board official Brian Oleson said board projections are now made on the assumption that farmers will be paying full compensatory freight bills in the not-too-distant future.
“That is not a political statement,” he said. “It is an assumption.”
