Efforts by Canadian milk producers to separate milk exports from the influence of
marketing boards have not satisfied international critics.
On Dec. 8, senior federal trade officials were in Washington, D.C., for one last-ditch effort
to convince American and New Zealand representatives that Canada is complying with
a1999 World Trade Organization ruling that rejected Canada’s export system.
They failed.
“They will be going back to the WTO in the new year to argue that we have not complied,”
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said Suzanne Vinet, director general of Agriculture Canada’s international trade policy
directorate. “We have not satisfied them.”
The WTO ruled in October 1999 that exports through provincial marketing boards were a
form of illegal export subsidy.
Since then, producers have been scrambling to set up a patchwork of different export
methods in different provinces.
They range from an auction system to a plan in Ontario and Manitoba where the accounting
firm Deloitte and Touche makes sure that dairy farmers who are interested in exporting
know what processing contracts are available.
Nix marketing boards?
In all cases, the system is supposed to be free from the influence of marketing boards,
which the WTO ruled are connected to government through enabling legislation.
The American and New Zealand governments continue to insist that marketing boards and
their governments still cast a shadow over the export arrangements.
If the WTO agrees, the Canadian dairy industry would have to scramble to create a new
system or those countries could retaliate against Canadian exports.
