They haven’t signed their names in blood or written them on legally binding contracts, but agricultural exporters say the Canada-U. S. border co-operation agreement puts the names of Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and U.S. president Barack Obama on the line.
They hope that means the deal to clear away many delays and red tape at the border is more than just friendly words.
“It comes from the prime minister and the president directly, so that gives us hope,” said James Laws, executive director of the Canadian Meat Council.
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Travis Toews, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said the Action Plan on Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness has support from on high, so government officials will probably commit to implementing it.
“When the highest offices in the nation identify this as a priority, it becomes a priority,” said Toews.
The deal announced Dec. 7 commits Canada and the U.S. to reducing border trade frictions and improving North American domestic security. Many analysts see it as a case of the U.S. being willing to reduce trade tensions to get more support from Canada on security matters.
The improvements to trade that will help farmers are:
• emphasis on developing electronic approvals for livestock
• standardization of veterinary drug approvals and pesticides
• developing a zone-based disease response approach that will prevent entire nations being locked down because of a local outbreak of animal disease
• eliminating multiple inspections for meat products, especially at the border.
In a statement, the Farmers of North America Strategic Agriculture Institute heralded pesticide standardization.
“This should prevent the debilitating price discrimination that at times has forced Canadian farmers to pay double for the same product sold by the same company on both sides of the border,” it said.
Laws said eliminating multiple inspections for meat makes sense because meat needs to flow quickly to be safe, and multiple inspections do nothing to improve food safety.
“The meat industry already has inspections and protocols that the other food sectors don’t have, so they need to reallocate some resources,” said Laws.
Simplifying trade and eliminating unnecessary red tape also makes sense for both governments, which are struggling with deficits.
“Because of the troubled situation, they realize they’ve got to keep the economy moving between our countries,” said Laws.
“If you can get rid of a few irritations and costs, that can still add up to billions.”
Since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, cross border trade of many products, especially food and livestock, has become more complicated.
For years after free trade was adopted, trade flowed more easily. But the security clampdown after the attacks caused many problems.
Other regulatory problems, such as country-of-origin-labelling (COOL), erupted for reasons many saw as protectionist and political.
Farm leaders were cheered by the commitment made by leaders of Canada and the U.S. to change course.
“For anything that needs export access, and that’s most of what we produce in Manitoba, this is good,” said Doug Chorney, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.
“Homeland Security; that’s a department that never existed before 9-11. They have thickened the border and made it less accessible for Canadians.”
Manitoba Pork Council general manager Andrew Dickson said the real-world impact of tight border regulations is absurd wastes of resources in the country.
“It involves veterinarians signing things off and running around the countryside delivering pieces of paper,” said Dickson.
“It’s expensive.”
While the agreement to iron out border wrinkles is progressive, Dickson said it’s hardly revolutionary.
“The EU’s worked these kinds of things out. A lot of trading blocs have worked these kinds of things out. We are the biggest trading bloc in the world and we need to work these things out,” said Dickson.
“These are straightforward things. There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t work these things out.”
Toews said eliminating border waits and red tape will let more animals cross the border and allow more Canadian livestock to be processed in Canada and shipped into the U.S.
“The duplicate meat inspections are a big deal at the border. That reinspection simply slowed down the whole distribution timeline and it went backwards on food safety because of the time that meat was held up,” said Toews.
Chorney said he hoped the agreement would bring Canada/U. S. relations back to a pre-9-11 basis for farmers.
“We became used to easy and fairly loosely regulated access to the U.S. (before the terror attacks),” said Chorney.
