World Trade Organization director general Pascal Lamy certainly didn’t know it but he used a Canada Day news conference to indirectly inject himself into a debate that played out among some Canadians at WTO talks last weekend.
Has Canada lost stature and influence in the most important international trade-rules setting forum, even though it is one of the most trade-dependent countries in the world?
Lamy seemed to say yes and there is clear surface evidence that it has.
As the world’s fourth largest agricultural exporter, Canada through the late 1990s and into this decade was a member of a WTO grouping called the “Quad” – the United States, the European Union, Japan and Canada. Ministers and officials from the four members regularly met to discuss international trade issues and WTO strategies.
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Now, the Quad is no more and the recently created G6 is generally regarded as the most important WTO grouping – the U.S., EU, Japan, Brazil, India and Australia. The group is regularly described as comprising the WTO’s key players.
Members of the export lobby Canadian Agri-Food Trade Association say this is evidence Canada has lost stature and they blame it on the defence of protectionist supply management that undermines Canada’s reputation as an aggressive trade
advocate.
“From the debriefings we are getting, it is as if we are on the outside looking in,” CAFTA president Liam McCreary, an Ontario farmer, said during the weekend. “A lot of the briefings talked about what they were hearing from others, not what they are involved in directly.
“The tough nut to crack is sensitive products and when Canada puts itself outside the consensus, it erodes our credibility and our position and influence. Canada should be one of the inside players in the G6.”
Dennis Laycraft of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association reinforced the point in a June 30 interview.
“There is a feeling that it should be the G7, not the G6, so if there is one thing that has frustrated us, it is that whatever has happened has not kept us in that room,” he said.
“We’re straddling the fence on important issues here and I’m sure that leaves us on the sidelines.”
Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said it is clear Canada has lost influence and an insider role: “I’d like to find out how that happened over the past few years. Were we not being aggressive enough?”
Defenders of Canada’s balanced position deny the charge that Canada has lost influence, even as they bemoan the fact that Australia is there despite the fact that it is a smaller agricultural trader and holds views that are more single-minded on tariff reductions than does Canada.
“I don’t think Canada has been sidelined,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said June 30. “The fact that we’re not part of the G6 is unfortunate, but when detailed negotiations start, we’ll be providing leadership.”
Agriculture minister Chuck Strahl took the same view in a July 2 interview although earlier he had said Australia’s prominence over Canada was an irritation.
“I wish we were in on the G6 but that’s the reality we inherited,” he said June 29. “I don’t know exactly why, other than Australia has been more aggressive than we have been in recent years on trade issues generally.”
But on July 2, the minister said Canadian negotiators still have influence because they are consulted by others for their expertise on finding bridges between conflicting views.
“After a G6 meeting, our people get five or six phone calls saying ‘this is what was on the agenda. What do you think?’ “
For the record, the WTO said Australia is part of the G6 because it is part of the Cairns Group of medium sized exporting countries that includes Canada, New Zealand, Argentina and others.
Canada insists Australia does not represent Cairns on the G6 because it does not reflect Canada’s views on protecting sensitive products.
Which leads back to WTO leader Lamy at his July 1 news conference announcing a stalemate in talks and his mandate to find a deal within the next month.
Would he be going to St. Petersburg, Russia where G8 industrialized country leaders are meeting this month to press his case?
Not likely, Lamy replied, because the G8 leaders do not reflect the WTO dynamic.
Russia is not a member. Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France all are represented by the EU. The only G6 members there are the U.S. and Japan. And then there’s Canada.
“Canada is an important country but proportions change over time,” he said.
