MONTREAL – Canada may be walking into a trap at the World Trade
Organization negotiations, the country’s top farm lobbyist has warned.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen says
negotiators must recognize that the free trade and deregulation demands
of some other countries are a formula for getting greater access to
Canada’s lucrative food market.
Friesen is a strong supporter of WTO talks and Canada’s position of
trying to support both export interests and those sectors sensitive to
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imports.
But he warned in a Jan. 22 speech to a Dairy Farmers of Canada
convention that the new round of talks has its dangers.
Canada must not buy into the free trade rhetoric of the United States
and the European Union, he said.
They would love to undermine supply management rules and then buy a
share of the Canadian dairy, chicken and egg markets.
Friesen said those two agricultural powerhouses will do what they can
to dismantle farm policies in other countries while giving their own
farmers an advantage through continued subsidies.
“The U.S and the EU will talk free trade and then when other countries
are vulnerable, buy as much market share as they can,” said the
Wawanesa, Man., hog and turkey producer.
Friesen said Canada’s grain and oilseeds producers have paid the price
for the last world trade deal. It led to rich European and American
subsidy regimes that damaged prices and incomes for farmers in
lower-subsidy countries such as Canada. He said that despite federal
government assurances that supply management is not up for negotiation
in Geneva, it is.
He said Australian and New Zealand farm leaders continually preach that
their prescription of low supports and deregulation are the answer for
other countries. Both have been critical of Canada’s support for border
protections used to guard supply management.
Yet he said when he visited Australia recently, an egg farmer told him
that farmers have no power and the processors rule.
Dairy farmer delegates, who watch New Zealand challenge their
industry’s export policy through the WTO, applauded Friesen’s attack on
the Oceanic free traders.
But New Zealand’s agricultural attaché in Ottawa said the Canadian farm
leader had it wrong about his country. Iain Sandford said New Zealand
farmers continue to have market power through co-operatives.
“I can’t speak for Australia, but in New Zealand, dairy farmers are
doing quite well.”
