Canada’s trade minister last week said progress in agricultural negotiations this winter would be an important boost to get a full round of World Trade Organization negotiations off the ground.
However, Pierre Pettigrew, in a speech prepared for delivery Feb. 16 to Ottawa diplomats, conceded that a full launch of WTO negotiations will not happen for a year or more.
An attempt to launch a negotiating round fell apart in Seattle last December. But under the 1994 WTO deal, new agricultural talks are required to start in Geneva. WTO ambassadors agreed recently to get those talks started this winter.
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Pettigrew said they can be a “confidence building” event if progress is made.
“We have a vested interest in helping to make sure that the talks on agriculture go well,” he said, according to the text.
“Canadian farmers are suffering because of subsidies paid to the agricultural sectors of many of our trading partners. Strong progress on agriculture would be a powerful incentive to begin a broader-based round of negotiations a year or so down the road.
“Broader negotiations, in turn, would help the agriculture talks.”
Most observers hold out little hope that the agriculture talks will yield much.
In Seattle, while there was some closing of the gap between European, American and Cairns Group positions, when the talks collapsed the European Union said any concessions it had made were no longer “on the table.”
Developing world countries also were demanding a greater say in defining the scope and nature of the negotiations.
Progress in single-sector negotiations is difficult because there is no ability to make a concession in one sector to gain in another.
The only other WTO talks starting in Geneva this winter is a negotiation on services.
Meanwhile, Canada goes into the next round of world agriculture and trade talks without its most experienced agriculture trade negotiator.
Mike Gifford, long a trade policy analyst for Agriculture Canada and Canada’s chief agriculture negotiator during the 1986-93 round, is retiring from the government this winter.
– WILSON
