The American government plans to demand another audit of the Canadian Wheat Board this year to ensure its sales to the United States are fair, United States agriculture secretary Dan Glickman said last week.
But he also suggested a pilot project that will allow Americans to deliver wheat directly to Canadian elevators could help reduce American anger about the cross-border grain trade. The project is expected to be announced within a month.
Glickman made his comments Jan. 13 in Washington after his first face-to-face meeting with Canadian agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief. The two met for almost three hours.
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“We’ve asked for … or will ask for, an audit of the board… because we still have some concern about that,” Glickman told reporters in Washington, D.C. Jan. 13, according to a transcript of his remarks.
Under an earlier agreement, the Americans can ask for an audit of the board’s sales each year but there has not been one for several years. The cost, and who pays, is an issue.
“They have not formally asked for one yet and when they do, we will have some discussions about who pays,” Vanclief said in a Jan. 15 interview.
He said he told Glickman the wheat board sales practices are above board and will survive scrutiny.
But Glickman also said a Canadian agreement allowing American producers to haul grain directly to Canadian elevators to be sent to mills could help Americans feel the system is not so biased against them.
American producers or businesses have been able to deliver to feed mills but could not deliver to elevators where shipments to mills could be assembled.
The new pilot project will allow that, as long as the grain has been certified disease-free and is segregated from Canadian stocks.
Vanclief said four prairie grain companies with 50 border-area elevators are interested in being open to American grain, if it is competitive. “It will be supply and demand.”
Glickman said it could send an important political message to American farmers and politicians.
“To the extent that the American producer felt they had the same kind of access for American grain into Canada as Canadian producers have in the United States, it would help quell the feeling that perhaps we’re in an unfair trading scenario right now,” he said.
After the meeting, Vanclief said in an interview he got along well with his American counterpart and expected a good relationship.
He said the Americans have not yet decided whether to call for a World Trade Organization disputes panel on Canada’s milk export pricing policies.
Origin labels rejected
And Canada has made it clear to Glickman that giving in to congressional pressure to require “country-of-origin” labeling on imported beef would be unacceptable.
In fact, Glickman went out of his way after the meeting to fend off American suggestions that Canadian beef may be less safe than American beef.
“Well, let me put it to you like this,” he told an American reporter. “When I go to Canada, I eat Canadian beef. All right?”
