OTTAWA – Canada is assessing its defences and looking for international allies as it prepares for an expected American attempt in 1999 to use world trade talks to undercut the Canadian Wheat Board.
Federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale last week said he expects the United States to use the next round of trade negotiations, which start in little more than two years, to demand changes in what are called state trading enterprises.
In a report to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Canada has identified both the wheat board and the Canadian Dairy Commission as fitting the description.
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“It is no secret that the Americans wish to make this a cause celebre from their point of view,” Goodale told reporters last week. “There may be some other countries around the world that hold a similar point of view.”
But inside and outside the House of Commons, Goodale vowed Canada would not allow the next GATT agreement to undermine the ability of any country to run trading corporations.
He said at a summer meeting of the Cairns group of middle-sized trading countries, that Australia and New Zealand agreed with Canada.
The Cairns group will work together during the next GATT round on the issue, he said.
“It was the common consensus of all the Cairns group countries … that we have every right to stand up for state trading agencies and that we will do.”
Farmers skeptical
Saskatchewan New Democrat MP Vic Althouse, who raised the issue in the Commons, said farmers have reason to be skeptical of Liberal claims to support the board.
“Prior to the government’s election in 1993, the prime minister promised to keep the Crow Benefit and after the election, he killed it,” said Althouse. “Now, before another election, he is promising the wheat board will stay… . Why, given its record, should any farmer trust the Liberal government to keep the board?”
Althouse said the Americans have made their “avowed goal” in the next GATT round the elimination of state trading enterprises.
Goodale said the only way the Americans could make a case against the board is to prove it is an unfair trader, and three times the board has been exonerated by investigations.
He said it is a case of the U.S. not wanting to play by the trade rules it has accepted.
“The rules are there and the rules must be respected,” he said outside the Commons.
“The Americans may have some trouble with the proposition but there will be enormous international pressure to abide by the rules of the game.”
