Don’t believe the hype about bilateral trade deals, says the head of the Canadian Agri Food Trade Alliance.
They aren’t the solution and are a dangerous distraction if they take the focus away from achieving an international trade deal.
“It’s time to be bold,” said Liam McCreary in a panel discussion during the Canada Grains Council annual meeting.
“People who say the (World Trade Organization) is dead and that we should only go after bilats and regional agreements to meet Canada’s needs – scratch the surface and look at what they’re really after. They’re not after trade.”
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But a Canadian Wheat Board lawyer and a dairy industry representative said they thought that seeking bilateral deals is essential for exporters.
Jim McLandress, CWB general counsel, said the American government is aggressively signing new deals all over the world and threatens to snatch some of Canada’s best export grain markets.
Recently it negotiated a deal with Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
“Any gain in U.S. market share there is going to come directly at the expense of Canadian market share,” said McLandress.
“The preferential tariffs that they’ve negotiated could well shut Canada completely out of those markets and, between those three countries every year, they buy approximately a million tonnes. That’s $250 million worth of grain from Canada.”
The same goes for a free trade agreement between Morocco and the United States.
In 2003-04, Canada exported 450,000 tonnes of durum to Morocco, making that Canada’s second largest customer of the crop.
“Morocco is a key Canadian durum market,” said McLandress.
He said the U.S. is targeting countries that make up 30 percent of the sales of the CWB. Canada needs its own bilateral deals to protect the turf it already has.
McCreary said the problem with bilateral deals is that they often leave out the most contentious issues, which tend to be agricultural products, so they often fail to expand access where it is needed.
Only a world trade agreement can strangle the host of mechanisms that various countries use to boost their exports and protect their markets, he said.
Emile Marquette, president of the Dairy Farmers of Saskatchewan, said bilaterals are not a key concern for his members.
“We don’t really trade,” he said. But they make sense for any exporter.
“I think that’s the way they’re going to have to go, because that’s what everyone, that’s what the Americans, are doing.”
McLandress said the early indications of a new world trade deal are not promising for western Canadian farmers, especially if weakening the wheat board is being considered.
