The way agriculture minister Ralph Goodale seems to see it, American farmers threatening to use piles of manure to block grain imports from Canada will not have to look too far for their supplies.
Their anti-Canadian rhetoric would do the trick.
“There is no factual basis whatsoever for the allegation that Canadian grain movement into the U.S. marketplace is at all unusual or disruptive,” Goodale said last week. “It is factually false.”
Last week, American trade representative Charlene Barshefsky told farmers in North Dakota that she was taking their anger over Canadian imports “very much to heart.”
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One farmer told her if the government didn’t stop imports from Canada, farmers would pile manure on roads and rail lines coming from Canada.
Barshefsky said the United States should not become “a dumping ground” for Canadian grain.
Goodale said it is not. Exports are up this year from last, but far below record levels in 1994 when the U.S. government put a one-year limit on imports.
The American government says it wants consultations again on the level of Canadian sales south.
Goodale said he would refuse any discussions with the American government if the goal was to set a limit on Canadian exports. But he would be willing to sit down with Barshefsky “to straighten the record. If the Americans are basing their view on artificial arithmetic, then it has to be straightened out.”
No meeting has been arranged.
He said he would go to a meeting “as long as the discussion is based on hard facts and not on distorted rhetoric or political hot spots of a very localized nature on the U.S. side of the border.”
