Federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale was sounding exasperated last week over continuing American suggestions that Canada will or should limit the amount of grain flowing south this year.
“I sometimes wonder what part of the word ‘no’ these people fail to understand,” he told the House of Commons April 17. “Let me be clear. There is no limit. There is no agreement. There is no inclination on the part of Canada to move in that direction.”
He was responding to comments by a senior American agriculture official that while in Washington last week, Canadians had privately agreed to limit exports.
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During a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives agriculture committee April 17, congressmen complained again about high volumes of grain flowing into their states from Canada.
They demanded the flow be capped at no more than the 1.5 million tonne limit agreed to in 1994 for one year.
August Schumacher, head of the U.S. agriculture department’s foreign agricultural service, said it may have been accomplished.
A Canadian delegation from Agriculture Canada had been in Washington the previous day, he said.
“We understand they have told us they would try not to exceed this amount,” he said.
When the news flashed back to Ottawa, the bureaucrats who had been at the Washington meetings were flabbergasted.
Mike Gifford, senior Canadian agriculture trade negotiator, said Canadian officials had indicated they do not expect exports to exceed 1.5 million tonnes.
However, they did not commit to making sure that was true.
“The bottom line is we told the Americans there is no goddamned way that we are going to agree to any limits on exports of wheat or barley to the United States,” the still-peeved Gifford said in an April 18 interview. “We agree with their guesstimates of 1.4 or 1.5 million tonnes, but it is the American customer who decides how much we sell. We told them if the market changes, or if they go back to (export subsidies), there will be a lot more exports.”
Gifford said there was a report from Washington that Schumacher may have misunderstood the question he was being asked.
“Bottom line is, they made an error.”
The mix-up comes just a week before Canadians and Americans are scheduled to sit down in Washington again for American-requested “consultations” on grain imports.
Canada has said it will sit down not to discuss a possible cap but to “set the record straight.”
