Canada’s $2.5 billion canola industry is a prime example of why a new world trade deal is needed, Canola Council of Canada president Barb Isman said last week.
She told the House of Commons agriculture committee Nov. 6 the canola industry is deeply dependent on trade, but the last World Trade Organization deal in 1994 made things worse.
“We’re the poster child for what not to get out of a trade deal,” she told MPs.
It gave American soybeans significant access advantages over canola in key markets including China, India, Pakistan, Korea and Taiwan. It left the industry facing higher tariffs for canola oil than for raw seed.
Read Also
Canola oil transloading facility opens
DP World just opened its new canola oil transload facility at the Port of Vancouver. It can ship one million tonnes of the commodity per year.
And it left canola producers competing in world markets against foreign vegetable oil products that are much more subsidized.
She said Canadian canola producers receive domestic subsidies worth 0.4 percent of the value of production, while American canola subsidies are worth 36 percent of production value and soybeans were subsidized at 23 percent of value in 1999.
“We do not believe this is an acceptable or fair outcome for canola growers,” said Isman. “And they are looking to us to end the discrimination against us.”
However, she said she was not principally blaming the government for the poor result in 1994. The industry itself failed to pay sufficient attention to the talks and the issues so when negotiators were drawing up detailed schedules, the American oilseed industry did a better job letting American negotiators know what they needed than the Canadians.
The American industry got the access rules it wanted.
“It really was our fault because we didn’t articulate our position,” she said.
This time, as a member of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, the canola council is making its needs known. Isman was in Cancun, Mexico, during recent WTO talks and CAFTA is closely watching the negotiations unfold and lobbying the government to make sure its interests are understood.
Canadian Alliance MP Howard Hilstrom tried his best to elicit from her a criticism of the government performance in the last trade talks. Isman stuck with her view that the industry was as much to blame.
“You sound like a Liberal,” said Hilstrom.
“If my father heard that, he’d take me out behind the barn and shoot me,” she said, to Liberal guffaws.
