OTTAWA (Staff) – Ten years after the Conservatives killed Canagrex, the last controversial Liberal attempt to boost food exports, the new Liberal government is planning another foray into the politically-sensitive world of export promotion.
This autumn, federal ministers will be collaborating to flesh out an election campaign promise to create a “foreign agri-food marketing service”.
Agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said last week the government must intervene if Canadian processed food exports are to claim the full potential market share.
He said the private food processing industry has failed to capitalize on the sales potential in growing Asian markets, now dominated by American and Australian firms.
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“If we are to reach our goal for export growth, we must improve that performance,” said the minister.
The problem is not in bulk exports, now handled largely through government organizations like the Canadian Wheat Board. It is in value-added foods, where there is little government role.
Proposals this fall
Goodale said he will make proposals this fall to trade minister Roy MacLaren for a new government-led effort to boost exports.
He said the content of the strategy could range from the broad powers given the Crown corporation Canagrex in 1983, to something modelled on the U.S. foreign agricultural service.
“There are a number of models we could use,” he said.
That means it could be anything from a direct government sales efforts to credit aid for the private sector or simply a better system of gaining market intelligence through embassies and then getting that information back to exporters.
A decade ago, the former agriculture minister used the same criticism of private export efforts to justify the creation of Canagrex, a Crown corporation with a broad mandate to help exporters or to sell directly itself.
It became a major controversy when some industry exporters, aided by the then Conservative Opposition, created a fear that Canagrex would be a vehicle for a government take-over of the food industry.
Co-operate with provinces
Goodale said whatever Ottawa decides to create, it will work in co-operation with provinces and the private sector.
During last year’s election, the Liberals promised to create a service “to embark upon a series of aggressive export strategies to make agricultural trade promotion a central focus.”
Several weeks ago in Regina, Goodale criticized the fact that even as politicians are setting ambitious export growth goals, the performance of the private sector exporters is lagging.
While competitor countries are breaking into emerging Asian and Latin American markets, Canadian food exporters have been content to take the easier option of developing markets in the U.S.
“This means we are becoming increasingly dependent upon that U.S. market, which recent experience shows is not all that reliable, and we’re missing out on the fastest growing economic zones on the face of the earth,” he told his Regina audience.
Back in Ottawa, as the political season begins again, Goodale and his policy planners will try to orchestrate an assault on that mediocre record.
