The Conservative government kept its promise to supply management farmers last week when it refused to endorse a Cairns Group communiqué that called for cuts in sensitive product protections.
The decision to dissent after a Cairns meeting in Lahore, Pakistan, April 18 outraged exporters represented by the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance who were there for a Cairns group farm leaders’ meeting and to push for liberalization.
“CAFTA is disappointed that Canada could not support the Cairns communiqué,” president and Saskatchewan farmer Alanna Koch said in a telephone news conference from Lahore.
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She said Canadian negotiators and politicians must show “vision and courage in world trade talks.”
CAFTA helped push through a farm leaders’ statement that supported across-the-board tariff cuts, including lesser cuts for “sensitive products” such as Canadian dairy, poultry and egg sectors, as well as expansion of tariff rate quotas that allow imports of sensitive product competition to a maximum percentage of the domestic market.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen, also in Lahore for the farm leaders’ meeting, dissented from the final farm statement for the same reason.
Friesen, representing supply management as part of CFA, said the other farm leaders do not recognize that weakening of sensitive product protections would force marketing boards to compete with subsidized imports.
He said what is needed is “real aggressive market access improvements while ensuring flexibility for sensitive and special products.”
Friesen noted that the government, represented by trade minister David Emerson, objected to the Cairns Group statement for the same reason.
“The government has continued to work for the interests of the entire
Canadian agriculture industry and CFA will continue to support them in that fight.”
Last week, the Cairns group urged all World Trade Organization countries to make the compromises necessary to reach a deal.
The group includes Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay.
Canada signed on to most of the Cairns calls for an aggressive WTO deal that reduces domestic subsidies and trade barriers and ends export subsidies by 2013.
However, it dissented from the market access paragraphs that said while sensitive products can be subjected to lower tariff reductions than other products, they must end up with reduced protection.
