Peter Van Loan is the latest in a long string of federal trade ministers to insist there is no inconsistency between promoting free trade and defending protectionist supply management.
The 47-year-old MP from a rural and suburban riding north of Toronto was named trade minister four months ago and has already faced the criticism that Canada’s trade policy is hypocritical.
“We’ve seen over many years that we can have supply management in the context of free trade and free trade agreements,” Van Loan said.
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“Throughout, we have been able to maintain our support for supply management and we’ll continue to do so.”
Since the 1980s, federal trade ministers have defended a position in which Canada demands more foreign market access for sectors that are world-market competitive while protecting domestic dairy, poultry and egg industries with high tariffs because they cannot compete with cheaper imports.
Van Loan said he is comfortable with the dual mandate because most countries have sensitive sectors they want to shield from unfettered competition.
“Canada in the hierarchy of countries in the world is fairly aggressive on the free nature of our trade in agricultural products and history has shown you can successfully defend supply management and move toward freer trade at the same time,” he said.
Van Loan was named to the trade portfolio in January and says the ensuing months have convinced him that agriculture, heavily dependent on trade, is not like other trade sectors.
Trade liberalization deals can be negotiated, but agricultural barriers keep appearing.
“Since I arrived on the job, I’ve become convinced the agricultural economy lives in a bit of a parallel trading universe to the general trading economy,” he said.
“Whatever trade agreements or laws may be in place, the strength of agricultural lobbies around the world mean you still have to do a lot of fire fighting. It’s helpful to have multilateral trading processes and bilateral agreements, but you still run into issues like country-of-origin labelling in the United States, notwithstanding having NAFTA.”
Van Loan was in Washington April 22 and once again raised Canadian protests against the COOL rule that is now being challenged at the World Trade Organization.
Van Loan said despite trade agreements, federal trade ministers must spend a lot of time pushing back against countries that take advantage of “the opportunity for protectionism to don the cloak of environmental, health or other regulations.”
However, he also lauded agricultural traders as a model for what other sectors should be doing.
While many export sectors have built a reliance on the American market, he said, agriculture has worked hard to diversify its customer base. It should be the template for Canada’s overall trade, he added.
“It is really agriculture that has led the way,” Van Loan said.
“To that extent, it is a good model for how our other trading relationships can grow.”
Van Loan is an urban lawyer and professor, but he said he has roots in the agricultural community.
His riding, though largely a suburban extension of Toronto, has a vibrant farming community, and he grew up on his grandfather’s mixed farm north of Toronto.
His grandfather was an agronomist refugee from Estonia who lost his property to the Soviet Union. He worked in Toronto when he moved to Canada.
“As soon as my brother and I were born, he wanted to get back on the farm because my brother and I had to see what real life was and real life happened on a farm,” he said.
