For Canada’s sugar industry, the experience with recent trade negotiations has been at best bittersweet.
Representatives of refiners and sugar beet growers were on Parliament Hill last week to proclaim their support for freer trade and to complain they have been hurt by the results of past negotiations.
“In all recent trade agreements, we have fared worse, not better, in the sugar industry,” Sandra Marsden, president of the Canadian Sugar Institute, told MPs on the House of Commons agriculture committee.
Added Mark Kuryvial of Taber, Alta., president of the Canadian Sugar Beet Growers’ Association: “There is a growing recognition of the disadvantages the Canadian industry operates under … . We are looking for free and fair trade in sugar.
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“What I’d like to see is free trade in sugar,” he said. “If that can’t be achieved through negotiations, then the government will have to look at giving more support to Canadian agriculture.”
Lost in trade talks
In both the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the Canadian sugar industry lost ground because Americans reduced the quota allotted to Canada, both groups argued.
One of the primary victims was the Manitoba sugar beet industry, which lost its processing plant in Winnipeg last year because the 1995 world trade agreement allowed the United States to reduce the amount of Canadian sugar it allows to cross the border. Sugar beets no longer are grown in the province.
