ST. JOHN’S, Nfld. – It is make or break time at World Trade Organization talks this week in Geneva and few are willing to bet on the outcome.
As ministers from more than 40 countries gather in a last hour attempt to save the negotiating round launched in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, no one is predicting a dramatic settlement.
At best, there will be agreement to send technical negotiators into a final frenzied month of talks.
But failure by key WTO players to make compromises that would gore some domestic sacred cows could doom the talks.
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Ministers gathering in Geneva June 29 will have before them a proposed text from agriculture negotiations chair Crawford Falconer that some Canadian trade-sensitive sectors warn would be bad for Canada.
The New Zealander has proposed a formula that would see some cuts in over-quota tariffs that protect supply management.
He also suggests, based on negotiating positions tabled so far, that the existence of monopoly powers for state trading enterprises like the Canadian Wheat Board be negotiable.
Chuck Strahl, Canadian agriculture minister heading off to his first WTO negotiation, is under intense pressure from Canadian farm and food lobbyists to insist on a Canada-friendly deal. Scores of them are in Geneva this week to press their case.
“The document clearly does not reflect enough of Canada’s position,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said June 25.
“Canada must not support this paper as the Canadian position on trade is not reflected in it,” said Dairy Farmers of Canada president Jacques Laforge.
In contrast, Alberta agriculture minister Doug Horner said last weekend Canada should support a market-opening deal but that result is far from guaranteed.
“A deal is on the table,” said Horner, one of nine provincial ministers in Geneva this week.
“There is a deal there. It is a matter of the political will to put it all together. I hope and I’m cautiously optimistic that the political will is there to put a deal together, recognizing everyone’s strengths and everyone’s weaknesses. At the end of the day, there is a need for everyone at the table to come out of this thing with a positive deal on market access and in reducing supports around the world.”
Strahl said June 25 that success is not possible at these talks but failure is.
“There is not going to be a deal this week but there has to be indications from the big players that their public negotiating positions to date are not bottom line positions,” he said.
“They can move. We’ve got to have that signal.”
Canada will not be that big a player and its positions will not determine the outcome, he said.
Saskatchewan minister Mark Wartman, also heading to Geneva, said the outcome is anyone’s guess.
“At this point it is too tight to call,” he said June 25. “The pressure is huge, not just from agriculture but from NAMA too (non-agricultural market access). I just don’t know.”
Friesen acknowledged that Strahl will be facing a “tremendous challenge” of representing all sides of the Canadian farm sector and trying to be part of a deal.
“I don’t know if there is time to get a deal if everyone is in on it,” he said. “The concern is the Europeans and the U.S. will make an agreement and everybody will say ‘we have to step up to the plate’ even if they don’t like it. The fear is that just to meet the deadline, they may accept a deal that is not good.”
Horner insisted this is the time to strike a deal, before American negotiating authority expires next year.
“There is enough time if the political will is there,” he said.
“If the political will is not there to make these decisions today, it’s not going to be there two years from now, so we’re fooling ourselves if we say we’ll just wait, put this thing in cold storage and come out of it when the Americans can negotiate again. The same issues will be before ministers again.”
