It seems to be no one’s first choice, but farm leaders were on Parliament Hill last week urging the federal government to become more aggressive in negotiating bilateral trade deals with other countries.
In all cases as they appeared before the House of Commons international trade committee Dec. 5, their preference was for a broad deal through the World Trade Organization that would discipline domestic subsidy policies as well as barriers to markets.
But WTO talks are stalled and competitor countries including the United States are aggressively negotiating bilateral market share deals.
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Trade issues existed long before U.S. president Donald Trump and his on-again, off-again tariffs came along, said panelists at a policy summit last month.
“Canada has fallen behind some of our competitors in pursuing bilaterals,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture vice-president Marvin Shauf told MPs.
The CFA suggested the government pursue deals with China, Japan, a group of South American countries, India and Morocco.
Liam McCreery, past-president of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, said his organization continues to favour a relaunch of WTO talks and does not want to see bilateral negotiations take energy or resources away from multilateral talks.
But even he said the government should be more active in bilateral negotiations, conceding that competitors are winning.
McCreery cited a U.S. deal with Morocco, which he called the gateway to Africa for grains. “The Americans have a leg up on us going into Africa for grains and oilseeds.”
The government said it is on the same page.
In a Dec. 5 speech to a grain industry symposium, agriculture minister Chuck Strahl said the government still prefers a WTO deal but it has little faith that talks will be revived anytime soon, despite reports that WTO director general Pascal Lamy may call ministers to meet in March to try to get talks going again.
The backup plan is a commitment by trade minister David Emerson to start more bilateral negotiations.
“He’s got a prioritized list,” said Strahl. “It will require frankly some beefing up of our negotiating team…. We’re playing catch-up now. The Americans are way ahead of us, as are the Australians, as are many others in these bilateral agreements.”
Meanwhile, the Commons trade committee hearing provided a forum for reviving some old disputes between rival farm groups.
McCreery said Canada could help get WTO talks back on track by announcing it will support lowering tariff protections for sensitive products such as Canada’s supply managed sectors.
Shauf insisted the best way to increase trade would be to make sure that access through agreed-upon five percent access quotas in a managed trade system is free of tariffs. He said across-the-board tariff cuts for many sensitive products would not really increase access to foreign country markets with high tariff walls, but would destabilize some sectors.
“Our producers want fair trade,” he said.
“They will take five percent clean access to markets rather than some theoretical 30 percent cut in 400 percent tariffs that gives them nothing.”
