Canadian trade negotiators should go to the next round of world trade talks prepared to negotiate away some tariff protection enjoyed by supply management, says the chair of the Canola Council of Canada.
Canada cannot credibly go to trade talks with no concessions to offer, said Simon Sigal, a longtime Agriculture Canada official who is now an Ottawa consultant and canola council chair.
He told a House of Commons committee Nov. 19 there is little or nothing the export sectors can offer. But supply management tariffs are a visible target.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
“If we go to the table and offer nothing, we become marginalized in about five minutes,” Sigal said.
Committee chair John Harvard wondered if Sigal and the export sector were ducking the issue by suggesting Canadian negotiators “give someone else’s property away.”
Sigal said there is little choice: “We don’t have a great deal to give in the export sector.”
In a later interview, Sigal said supply-managed sectors could lose half their tariff protection and still have significant support.
“We feel in the last negotiation, Canada’s position was defined in part by the desire to maintain supply management,” he said. “We don’t want to be hostage to them any more.”
He said he is not trying to widen divisions between Canadian agricultural sectors.
“We don’t want to get into a fight with supply management,” said Sigal. “But we have to to defend our own industry interests and if that means getting into a scrap, I guess we will.”
Later, Reform agriculture critic Howard Hilstrom said agricultural exporters are sending a clear message to the government that negotiating chips should not be bargained away to defend supply-management protections.
He said part of it is a growing view that as tariffs fall, dairy and poultry sectors will have to learn how to compete without the protection they now enjoy. Yet to defend those tariffs for just short-term protection, market liberalization efforts for exporters might have to be sacrificed.
But he said there appears to be less exporter sympathy for protections heading into this round of negotiations because the supply-management agencies now have developed their own export policies.
“They seem to want to have it both ways,” said Hilstrom. “Some of our witnesses are arguing that is not defensible.”
