Liberals, Canadian Alliance and most Progressive Conservative MPs last week pushed aside concerns of the Canadian sugar and sugar beet industry to approve a free trade deal with Costa Rica.
Sugar beet growers from southern Alberta and sugar refinery officials had told MPs that the deal leaves Canada’s industry vulnerable to being swamped by cheap imports from other Central American countries.
Canada’s largely unprotected and unsubsidized sugar beet industry would find itself out of business if other Central American countries who want free trade deals with Canada insisted on using the Costa Rican one as a model.
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Government officials have promised it will not happen. They promised to include a line in the preamble of the legislation asserting that it would not be a model for future trade deals with countries better able than Costa Rica to send cheap sugar north.
“This will allow us to support the bill and we will,” Lethbridge Canadian Alliance MP Rick Casson told the Commons during debate.
The Alliance joined most of the Conservatives and the Liberals in approving the trade deal last week by a vote of 201-48.
In Toronto, Sandra Marsden of the Canadian Sugar Institute scoffed at the Liberal assurance.
As a representative of refiners, she joined sugar beet growers before a parliamentary committee to warn that as usual, free trade deals are working against Canada’s sugar industry.
Previous deals have cut the access that exporters of sugar-containing products have into the United States. Meanwhile, the Costa Rican deal sets a precedent for other countries with more established refined sugar industries to demand equal access, she said.
“We are not happy that this bill has been passed,” Marsden said Nov. 1. “I think we are being traded off again.”
The deal exempts a number of Canadian sectors from cheap Costa Rican competition, including supply managed sectors such as dairy and chicken, as well as the beef industry.
During House of Commons debate, Medicine Hat, Alta., Alliance MP Monte Solberg accused the Liberals of always being ready to sacrifice other sectors like sugar to protect the interests of supply management.
“The government gets heat constantly from the United States and other countries about supply management,” he said.
“Instead of threatening a big industry like supply management, our government trades off sugar. It does it over and over again. In the free trade deal, there is no question that sugar was traded off.”
As a southern Alberta MP with sugar beet growers in his riding, Solberg did not mention that the cattle sector also was given an exemption from Costa Rican competition.
He voted for the legislation to implement the free trade deal.
