Fairly or unfairly, many Canadians would not have been surprised had the former Conservative government announced last week’s wheat trade deal with the Americans.
The Tories were, after all, widely viewed as being Americans in drag, more anxious to copy the Yanks than stand up to them.
So an announcement that the Conservatives were willing to pacify the Americans by accepting a volume cap on wheat sales south would have fit a political pattern and ideology that Canadians had come to expect.
Therein lies one of Ralph Goodale’s biggest problems as he tries to sell the deal as a victory rather than the “cave-in” that his critics are calling it.
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The Liberals were supposed to be different. They campaigned as a party that would stand up to the Americans when need be. It would be one of the yardsticks by which the Liberal performance would be judged and in some ways, they have lived up to their advance billing.
Faced with American over-fishing, fisheries minister Brian Tobin has had American vessels seized and the captains charged, two of them while they were outside Canadian territorial waters.
In the wheat negotiations, Goodale appeared to be following the same pattern. He talked tough. He sounded confident. He was not intimidated by Yankee threats of punishment. Canada would retaliate if confronted with American restrictions on wheat exports.
As recently as July 19 in Chicago, he told Americans: “The U.S. wants us to agree to curtail our exports of wheat while on the Canadian side, we don’t think we should have to since we are not doing anything wrong.” The Canadian industry, and even his political opponents, applauded his resolve.
Less than two weeks later, he was announcing Canada’s acquiescence to just such a restriction, albeit at numbers higher than the Americans had been demanding. Goodale says the deal is a victory for the access it gives and for the American agreement to withdraw, for a year at least, threats of restrictions.
Critics worry about the precedent set by the voluntary agreement to limit exports. If wheat this year, why not wheat again next year or beef or peas or whatever else the Americans want to exclude?
But politically, the greatest problem may be the loss of credibility because of the apparent about-face.
If Canada was willing to agree to an export quota (as it was as early as January), why was the public pretence of resistance maintained? For the past six months while the minister was assuring Canadians of his unbending virtue, American and Canadian negotiators were haggling over the price behind the scenes.
True, he was keeping a selected group of grain industry leaders informed, but the word of a compromise was being kept from the broader constituency.
If the government was prepared to compromise on the principle to avoid a trade war it thought would be too damaging to Canada, why lead Canadian farmers to believe otherwise?
Is this result really different from what the Tories would have negotiated?
