A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the launch of the United States trade action against Canadian hogs, but producers across the country have been alarmed at the amount of Canadian blood in that flow.
What has touched off alarms is the damage inflicted from within.
Ontario and Manitoba producers split early in the trade dispute. Apart from disagreeing over which law firm to hire to represent Canadian interests and how quickly to raise money to fight the action, Ontario and Manitoba interests had opposing views on how the trade barrier should be fought, each seeing the other side as jeopardizing its producers’ interests.
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“You two have got to get yourselves together on this,” a Saskatchewan hog producer urged Manitoba producers at an industry meeting a few weeks before the victorious conclusion of the trade dispute.
“We all want to help out, but everyone seems pretty divided right now.”
The day of the trade dispute victory, Canadian Pork Council president Clare Schlegel and Manitoba Pork Council president Karl Kynoch said they would take advantage of the relief from the trade battle to try to patch differences.
But that won’t be easy. Manitoba and Ontario have fundamentally different industries.
“Our producer interests are quite divergent now compared to what they were 15 or 20 years ago,” said Larry Skinner, chair of Ontario Pork.
When deciding how to respond to the U.S. imposed tariff, Ontario wanted slaughter hogs and weanlings studied separately. The industry there saw the increase in Canadian weanling shipments to the U.S. as the main cause of American upset. By law, Ontario Pork represents only slaughter hog exporters.
The Manitoba Pork Council, which represents all hog producers in that province, blamed a surge of Ontario slaughter hogs in 2003 as just as much of an irritant.
“They put their selfish, provincial interests ahead of the national interests,” said Ted Muir, former manager of Manitoba Pork Council, a few weeks before the trade decision was announced.
“They think they’re the centre of the universe. I don’t know how you deal with that.”
Although the fight over whether weanling and slaughter hogs should be considered the same was resolved early in the dispute, when the U.S. government declared it would be viewed as one product, the two provincial industries stayed apart, hiring independent teams of lawyers and raising money separately.
Ontario Pork was angry at Manitoba Pork Council for what it saw as Manitoba’s headlong rush into a separate effort, while Manitoba was angry at the national and Ontario boards for what it saw as foot-dragging and selfishness in demanding they control the approach to the dispute.
“Manitoba made a key decision that their producers were going to fund their own legal counsel. That was not what Ontario wanted,” said Skinner.
Manitoba producers spent more than $6 million on their defence. Ontario spent more than $4 million while the Canadian Pork Council spent about $2 million.
Producers have criticized the failure to put together a joint effort, saying it led to higher costs.
Skinner said there was duplication of legal work and argument between the Ontario and Manitoba efforts, but it worked better than he expected.
“I thought the overall effect in the end, although I was skeptical, was quite co-ordinated and came across in a fairly unified way,” said Skinner.
With trade victory behind them, industry leaders are pondering the next trade dispute with American interests and hoping to learn from the problems that occurred in this dispute.
Skinner said Ontario Pork hopes producers from across the country can come together through the Canadian Pork Council and form a united front next time.
But Manitoba Pork Council officials are skeptical of the national council’s ability to handle the issue. It views the national council as eastern-dominated.
