LETHBRIDGE – Pulse leaders want Canadian government officials to take a more hands-on approach to dismantling trade barriers that face the industry.
“We believe Canada needs to take a stronger stand on these issues,” said Steve Foster, outgoing chair of the Canadian Special Crops Association.
He told delegates attending the association’s annual convention that Canada has to stop being so timid when it comes to resolving pressing trade issues.
“Don’t sit back and be told what to do, but say this is what Canada is prepared to do,” said Foster.
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Gordon Bacon, chief executive officer of Pulse Canada, echoed that sentiment.
“We need to move quicker than we are in trying to find resolutions,” he said.
In the four face-to-face meetings he has had with federal agriculture minister Chuck Strahl, Bacon has kept the minister apprised of the two most serious trade issues facing the pulse industry.
India has had a quarantine order in place since 2004 forcing exporters to fumigate pea and lentil shipments for stem and bulb nematodes.
Initially the world’s largest pulse importer wanted the fumigation to occur at origin, which threatened Canadian shipments to India during the winter months due to complications with applying methyl bromide at temperatures below 5 C.
Canada has since negotiated an arrangement to fumigate at destination, but it is still a costly measure that creates risk and uncertainty with shipments to Canada’s largest pulse customer, said Bacon.
He is frustrated that two-and-a-half years later, Canada is still working on a science-based resolution to a problem involving a pest that is almost non-existent in Western Canada.
The other major issue is just a few months old, but of equal concern to the pulse industry.
Earlier this year, China detained shipments of peas from Canada and the United States for exceeding 0.3 parts per million of selenium, a non-metallic element found in soil.
“This is of particular concern because of the growing importance of China as a market for Canadian peas,” said Bacon.
Shipment arranged
Prior to the selenium issue, Chinese millers were on pace to import up to 400,000 tonnes of Canadian peas during the 2005-06 crop year, which would have been up substantially from the 168,595 tonnes of total Canadian pulse exports to China in 2004-05. The peas were displacing locally grown mung beans, used in the production of vermicelli noodles.
Bacon and Foster said the nematode and selenium measures are bogus issues, non-tariff trade barriers designed to protect local production during times of heavy pulse imports.
BSE taught the pulse industry a valuable lesson – that diplomacy plays just as big a role as technical submissions when it comes to dismantling such trade barriers, they said.
That is why Canada needs to get its foreign diplomats working on expeditious resolutions to the lingering trade barriers.
