The opposition majority on the Commons agriculture committee has endorsed a recommendation that Canada make clear it will not sign a world trade agreement that undermines the Canadian Wheat Board.The governing Conservative min-ority on the committee filed a dissenting report, insisting that while the fate of the CWB will not be decided at World Trade Organization talks in Geneva, its monopoly should end through a domestic decision.It was the usual political split when committee chair Larry Miller tabled the report in the Commons May 6.The Conservative MPs on the committee said the resolution was “clearly meant to divide farmers.”To suggest that Canada can change the Geneva text is naive, they wrote.”It is clear that given the wording of this report, the opposition parties do not understand how negotiations proceed at the World Trade Organization, as Canada cannot unilaterally have text changed or removed,” said the Conservative MP response to the majority report.In fact, the majority report largely reflects what the government says it is doing in Geneva.A succession of Conservative trade ministers have said the current working WTO text, which states that state trading enterprise monopolies (except a New Zealand kiwi marketer) be phased out by 2013, is unacceptable.Former trade minister Stockwell Day assured the House of Commons trade committee last year that Canada would not sign a text that undermined supply management protections or dictated an end to STE monopolies, as the current text does.
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