Recent controversial amendments to rules governing interprovincial trade in food products are meant to end unjustified provincial trade barriers and not undermine farmers, says a senior Agriculture Canada official.
Frédéric Seppey, executive director of Agriculture Canada’s strategic trade policy division, also said farmers were consulted, despite the complaints of some farm leaders that they were kept in the dark about the impending change.
“I can confirm that there has been consultation throughout the process and this is a process that has been going on for some years,” he said.
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“Farmer views were part of the considerations.”
Seppey said the amendments, agreed to by provincial trade ministers at an Oct. 15 meeting in Whitehorse to discuss the 14-year-old Agreement on Internal Trade, will extend the agreement to cover technical measures, including provincial content or packaging requirements that could block imported products from other provinces.
Ottawa did not have a minister at the meeting.
Seppey said the changes were made on the instructions of provincial premiers who at a 2007 meeting of the Council of the Federation decided that the agricultural chapter of the original agreement had to be strengthened if Canada was to have an internal common market.
“It was an irony until now that you had rules governing international trade and protectionism that were more stringent than those between Yukon and British Columbia,” he said.
“But premiers’ instructions said explicitly that supply management marketing boards were to be exempt from the technical measures rule and they are.”
The agreement will not take force until Ottawa and all provinces and territories sign on, with the exception of Nunavut.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Laurent Pellerin and the presidents of some CFA provincial affiliates and supply management agencies are vowing to lobby federal and provincial agriculture ministers to withhold their signatures unless changes are made.
Pellerin said he was livid over the Whitehorse amendment, insisting CFA had not been consulted and was not able to see a copy of the proposed text before it was approved. He called it government paternalism.
He also said CFA lawyers looked at the text and warned that it could undermine the ability of provinces to set higher standards for their food products.
“Our lawyers looked at the text this morning and confirmed that this is not safe for us,” a clearly angry Pellerin said Oct. 16 from his Quebec hog farm.
Seppey insisted the amendment was aimed at closing a gap in the AIT that allowed food product technical measures barriers between provinces that do not exist for other sectors.
The ministerial communiqué issued in Whitehorse proclaimed it progress.
“It constitutes a major improvement over the current chapter as it extends its coverage to all technical measures related to agricultural products,” it said.
“This will further facilitate interprovincial trade for the benefit of all Canadians, including producers and processors.”
A source familiar with the background to the changes made to the AIT agriculture chapter said it was unusual.
Trade ministers or their officials usually negotiate amendments to the agreement but this time, premiers dictated the terms after becoming frustrated with years of delay by agriculture ministers, under pressure from some of their farm groups.
Officials and ministers accustomed to working in relative obscurity were shocked to turn on their televisions in Whitehorse to see a story from Montreal about farmers protesting what was about to happen.
However, ministers had their marching orders and complied.
They also took the unusual step of publishing the agricultural text before governments had ratified it in an attempt to answer the complaints about secrecy.
Seppey said the provinces are driving the process of changing the AIT, despite it being a federal-provincial endeavour.
“After all, it regulates interprovincial trade and deals with provincial policies.”
He said the rule is “designed to make sure that technical measures are not more restrictive than they need to be to produce a result for a reasonable objective.”
A province or company that considers a technical requirement unnecessarily trade restrictive can appeal to a panel of experts set up under the AIT.
AIT was implemented in 1995.
