CALGARY – Canada’s failure to join in the war on Iraq could come back to haunt prairie farmers, says a former federal agriculture minister.
Charlie Mayer, now senior policy adviser with the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said anything that increases tensions between Washington and Ottawa has the potential to damage trade relations.
And anything that damages trade relations will have a negative impact on prairie agriculture.
Mayer said any chances Canada might have had of convincing the U.S. administration to be sympathetic to Canadian concerns over such issues as country-of-origin labelling of meat and wheat trade may have disappeared.
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“To the extent that we have become, in this instance, pretty much irrelevant, you have to think there’s going to be less inclination by the executive branch to intercede with the Congress to change, postpone or stall any of these things,” the former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister said in an interview during the association’s annual convention.
Mayer’s concerns were shared by other wheat grower members, including Ken Motiuk of Mundare, Alta.
Following a speech by senior U.S. Department of Agriculture official Kirk Miller, Motiuk took to the microphone to apologize for the federal government’s policies toward the U.S. and to distance western farmers from those policies.
“The current regime in Ottawa has almost no support politically west of the Ontario border,” he said.
In an interview later, Motiuk said western agriculture, especially the livestock sector, is highly dependent on the U.S. market and anything that threatens that trading relationship is cause for concern.
“The way we’re going right now, we’re headed towards a relationship that is more divisive rather than constructive.”
For example, he said, it’s clear that many officials in the U.S. administration, bureaucracy and livestock industry don’t like country-of-origin labelling, and the last thing Canada needs is to alienate potential allies on such important issues.
