The United States dairy industry is hoping an international trade panel this winter will do what years of political negotiations, legal challenges and threats have not been able to do – open the border to corporate exports of American table milk into Canada.
Under international trade rules in place since 1995, Canada must allow some foreign milk into the country.
But it says the minimum access commitment is more than filled by the millions of litres of milk Canadian tourists bring back each year from the United States.
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The U.S. disagrees and challenged Canada before the World Trade Organization to open its border to American corporate exporters.
That panel is expected to report confidentially in February and publicly in April.
“We really expect to win that one,” Richard Doyle, executive secretary of Dairy Farmers of Canada, said last week.
In its formal submission last autumn to the WTO panel in Geneva, the Canadian government argued the American challenge is an attempt to win border access it was not able to win at trade negotiations.
It is a challenge that can be “disposed of quickly” since there were no limits on how Canada could fulfil its minimum access requirement. Individual consumer table milk imports are as valid as organized imports from American companies.
“The ordinary meaning of the terms and conditions of Canada’s (import quota requirement)…is that it applies to Canadian individuals importing fluid milk for their personal consumption,” said the Canadian submission.
“Claims by the United States that they did not understand this are simply not credible.
“Stripped to its essential elements, this complaint by the U.S. is an attempt to obtain, through litigation, market access that it failed to obtain through negotiation,” said the submission.
