WHISTLER, B.C. – Canada’s agriculture ministers last week did the expected and proclaimed the supply management system a key component of the next generation of business risk management programs and that a made-in-Canada system must be defended at international trade talks.
After wrapping up two days of talks in this British Columbia resort community June 29, federal and provincial ministers issued a communiqué that reiterated support.
During a premeeting roundtable discussion organized by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, farm leaders such as CFA president Bob Friesen and Dairy Farmers of Canada president Jacques Laforge pressed the point that Canada must become aggressive in protecting supply management tariffs and other import barriers at World Trade Organization talks.
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It was a theme championed by Ontario minister Leona Dombrowsky during the closed meeting and embraced by other ministers, sometimes reluctantly by those from agricultural exporting provinces.
But one minister who supported the statement on supply management says the direction to Ottawa that it be a more aggressive defender of the system is largely irrelevant.
WTO talks will not produce a result that could harm supply management any time soon, B.C. minister Pat Bell said.
“I’ve been of the view for some time that this round of the WTO is dead,” he said. “I think the chances for an outcome are slim at best. Certainly the relationship I’ve had with the United States indicates to me that they are further entrenched in a protectionist position than they perhaps have ever been.”
He said that because of the likely WTO failure, B.C. is looking at supply management’s place in the agricultural firmament as “the status quo through the next eight or 10 years. I continue to support the supply management industry in a way that maximizes the benefits under the current regime.”
Bell said changes probably are inevitable “over the next 20 or 30 or 40 years, but I think to provide the certainty that is necessary for the industry, it is our responsibility to manage going forward in what we see as the most likely outcome and, in my view, it is that there will be no outcome for WTO.”
Bell said Plan B for export industries that have been hoping for a protection-decreasing WTO deal is for governments to develop bilateral trade deals that will open markets for them. That way, exporters get market improvements in key markets while Canada makes no concessions on supply management protections.
Trade experts generally agree that any WTO deal would include some reduction in tariff protections for dairy and poultry industries while forcing them to guarantee increased access to rival imports.
For that reason, the federal Conservative government has instructed negotiators not to be party to talks that are discussing how to reduce supply management protections, as a House of Commons resolution in 2005 insisted.
Until recently, supply management leaders were not critical of that strategy.
Last week, however, supply management leaders travelled to B.C. to argue that Canadian negotiators should get back into those talks but only to convince the vast WTO majority that they are wrong and there is no need to weaken sensitive product protections in order to pursue liberalized trade.
In a later statement, they worried that behind the scenes talks for WTO are intensifying.
