For a second unprecedented time, the Canadian Wheat Board is teaming up with Canada’s pasta manufacturing industry in a court bid to win duty protection from dumped and subsidized Italian pasta imports.
They are asking the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn a June Canadian International Trade Tribunal ruling that threw open the border to imports from Italy.
Don Jarvis, executive director of the Canadian Pasta Manufacturers’ Association, said in a July 7 interview the CITT decision released in mid-June is rife with errors and poor logic.
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As it had in a previous ruling, the trade tribunal accepted that imports from Italy are increasing, are dumped and may be subsidized.
Yet it also concluded these imports do not hurt Canadian manufacturers of the product and are not likely to in future. It ordered lifted an anti-dumping duty that averaged 20 percent of the value of the landed product.
“This is despite the fact that imports increased 22 percent last year and the Americans have imposed duties on the basis of the same evidence we produced,” he said in Ottawa. “And in their judgment, they got some basic facts wrong.”
In an affidavit filed with the court last week, Jarvis said the CITT erred, “that error is again unreasonable … (and) the Tribunal has failed to observe the principles of natural justice (and) procedural fairness.”
Valuable customer
The wheat board has been supporting the pasta manufacturers throughout their long battle against Italian product and the CITT. Pasta plants purchase several hundred thousand tonnes of durum wheat from the board each year.
The 21.3 million kilograms of Italian pasta imported last year represented 15 percent of the market and displaced production from 35,000 tonnes of Canadian durum.
Jarvis said he does not expect the court hearing to take place until next January and the border will remain open until then at least.
The appeal to the court is based in part on the argument that the CITT ruling simply is wrong.
It also complains that the domestic pasta producers have not been given a fair hearing.
Last year, after the CITT made its first judgment in favor of the importers, the pasta manufacturers went to court in an unprecedented attempt to have the CITT ruling overturned.
They won after the court ruled that the trade tribunal had misunderstood the Canadian market and, with the misunderstanding permeating the decision, it “cannot stand”.
The court threw the issue back to the CITT, which appointed the same three-member panel to rehear the case.
Pasta manufacturers went to court to argue for a new panel. The court refused to intervene again and the CITT panel quickly reaffirmed its original decision. Now, it is back to court.
