The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance has a new Ottawa manager and plans for change.
This summer, Keith Lancastle became the trade liberalization lobby group’s Ottawa-based executive director after a career in the not-for-profit sector, most recently running the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum.
And the organization, formed in 2000 by a coalition of export-oriented farm groups and agribusiness firms to support an ambitious World Trade Organization deal, is gradually broadening its base and focus.
Lancastle said CAFTA members have agreed that while a multilateral trade deal still is the preferred outcome, they also will support government efforts to negotiate bilateral or regional trade deals.
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The alliance has argued in the past that bilateral or regional trade deals are counterproductive because they take focus away from the WTO and deal only with trade barriers and not domestic trade or production-distorting policies.
But federal trade minister David Emerson has said that in the absence of progress in WTO talks, Canada will develop a more aggressive position on one-on-one trade negotiations.
“If we ignore bilaterals or regionals, they will not go away,” Lancastle said.
“They are not our preferred option but if WTO talks go into a freeze, then Canadian exporters will still have to trade and will still need market access. We would be shortsighted not to recognize these as a positive step for some of our members.”
He said one of his mandates from the CAFTA board is to expand the organization’s base both through attracting new members and establishing alliances with like-minded non-agricultural organizations.
Lancastle said export-interested business groups such as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters group are likely candidates.
He said another mandate is to raise the organization’s profile in Ottawa.
It has been without an Ottawa manager for almost a year and while president Alanna Koch from Saskatchewan visits Ottawa on lobby trips, it has not been a steady presence.
“Being in Ottawa and having an impact here is about being here consistently,” he said.
“One of my jobs clearly is to get our message out that a large part of Canadian agriculture depends on exports and access to foreign markets.”
Although just a month on the job, he has been making Ottawa contacts, including a meeting with Liberal rural caucus chair Ken Boshcoff and Conservative Alberta MP Ted Menzies, parliamentary secretary to the trade minister and a former CAFTA president.
Lancastle does not have an agricultural or trade background but he has worked for 25 years in various not-for-profit organizations that involved keeping disparate interest groups on the same page.
“I think what the board saw in me is someone who has a history of finding consensus among groups with a broad agreement on direction but specific needs within that and then developing an action plan to implement the general direction,” he said.
