Frank McKenna, Canada’s new ambassador to Washington, did some blunt talking last week to Americans about the cost to the United States of its continued ban on cattle imports.
“Canada is not going to sit back and abandon its farmers,” he said on the U.S. political television network C-Span March 29, moments after Ottawa’s billion-dollar farm aid package was announced.
He said Canada will build a bigger packing industry and do what it has to do to win world markets to make up for lost sales in the U.S.
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“We will make sure that we will end up having product on the world marketplace that will be acceptable however we need to get there, which will cost jobs to people in the United States of America,” he said, reflecting the official Canadian government message. However, McKenna went a bit too far.
“If this blockage continues on the border, we are increasingly going to develop our own processing industry in Canada,” he said. ” And we’re going to end up increasingly to invest in the science that will lead to universal testing or perhaps something short of universal testing.”
Whoops. Ears went up in Washington and Ottawa. Canada’s official position is that existing “science-based” limited testing is sufficient, although there is a growing chorus of opinion that packing plants proposing to do 100 percent testing as a marketing tool should be allowed to do so.
Within hours, Canadian embassy official Bernard Etzinger tried to clarify.
“The ambassador was referring to comments made by some on the issue of testing but was not considering any consideration of a change in the government’s part on our policy on testing.”
In Washington, Reuters News Service quoted a U.S. Department of Agriculture official as insisting that the existing random and risk-based testing levels in Canada and the U.S. are all that is needed.
In Canada, Canadian Cattlemen’s Association president Stan Eby said it is positive that McKenna is forcefully making Canada’s arguments against the border closing. However, he said the ambassador should be better briefed.
“It is part of our job to make sure he is up to speed in what is a changing landscape,” the Ontario producer and feedlot operator said. “If he had said we are moving toward more testing, he would have been on firmer ground.”
Conservative associate agriculture critic and Manitoba cattle producer James Bezan said the confused messages to the U.S. hurt Canada.
“I think the confusion in what we say, one thing now and another thing a few hours later, really cuts our legs out when we try to get our message to the Americans.”
McKenna also said during the C-Span interview that the closed border will mean beef packing jobs will flow from the U.S. to Canada.
“That’s not where we want to go.”
