Barry Wilson

Canada’s food trade hit new export and surplus records last year as the trend toward value-added sales continued. Preliminary merchandise trade figures compiled by Statistics Canada and published last week indicated the value of food exports last year hit a record $18.8 billion, a 7.2 percent jump from 1995 levels. The surplus of exports over […] Read more

Farm lobbyists and industry officials last week told MPs they support Canada’s free trade deal with Chile, which is scheduled to take effect in June. “We endorse any governmental initiative that expands international market opportunities for prairie agriculture,” Gordon Pugh of Prairie Pools Inc. told the Common foreign affairs committee last week. “The Canada-Chile FTA […] Read more

Food prices increased an average 2.2 percent during the past year, exactly in line with the national inflation rate. However, during the past dozen years, the cumulative impact of food price increases has been far less than the general inflation rate. Statistics Canada last week reported that since 1986, the Canadian inflation rate calculated through […] Read more

The federal government’s bill for supporting agriculture during the next fiscal year will fall by one-third, heading toward its lowest point in close to two decades, according to spending estimates presented to Parliament last week. In the year beginning April 1, 1997, Ottawa expects to spend a net $1.65 billion on Agriculture Canada programs, compared […] Read more

The federal government last week sent out mixed messages about its cost recovery plans while defending the cost recovery proposals of its most controversial example, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. When he presented government spending plans to Parliament, treasury board president Marcel MassŽ indicated the government plans to continue cost recovery expansion with an eye […] Read more

After three years of stripping billions of dollars out of Canada’s social programs and health budgets, finance minister Paul Martin last week decided to throw some money at the problems earlier cuts have helped create. The funds will be targeted to experimenting with new health-care programs and expanding aid for poor families with children. In […] Read more

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senior United States government officials this week put the world, Canada included, on notice that it plans to throw its trade weight around during the next year, using export subsidies if necessary to win markets. At the opening of the U.S. agriculture outlook forum Feb. 24, agriculture secretary Dan Glickman and trade […] Read more

Over the objections of New Democrat and Reform party MPs, the House of Commons last week sent the Canadian Wheat Board reform legislation to a Commons committee for public hearings and debate. The Commons voted to allow the agriculture committee to travel west the week of March 17 for public hearings in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, […] Read more

Canada has triggered a nasty beef trade dispute with Australia by announcing it is cutting Australia’s share of the beef import quota this year. Canadian trade officials say it is a case of use it or lose it. Australia complains it is a unilateral Canadian decision that runs counter to freer trade. There have been […] Read more

This winter’s congestion in the grain transportation system is giving federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale an unexpected international political headache. In three weeks, when the minister leads a delegation of food and agriculture traders and business people on a 10-day selling trip to Asia, the theme is supposed to be expansion of Canadian food sales […] Read more