SASKATOON — If you’re intrigued by stories surrounding the Bermuda Triangle don’t fly all the way to the Atlantic. Canada has got its own version of the triangle in Thunder Bay, Ont.
Shiploads of specialty crops from the port have gone missing on the official export totals kept by Statistics Canada. In the March 4 issue of STAT, a pulse crop newsletter, author Brian Clancey said officials at Statistics Canada missed over 375,000 tonnes of exports when they calculated last fall’s totals.
The government agency counted only 221,711 tonnes of specialty crop exports leaving the country from August to December, 1993. The real total should be well over 600,000, said Clancey. He said the worst error occurred with field peas. Thunder Bay exported 310,842 tonnes of peas in that period, none of which ended up in the Statistics Canada totals.
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“That stuff is definitely leaving Canada, it’s just not showing up in the statistics. It’s just flat out being missed,” said Clancey.
He gets his numbers on a monthly basis from the Lake Shippers’ Clearance Association in Thunder Bay. When he compared his figures with Statistics Canada’s they didn’t match.
Bob Gordon, with the international trade division of Statistics Canada, admits there was an oversight with these shipments and added the problem goes beyond this isolated incident.
Under-reporting common
“We know that there is some under-reporting in our export statistics, there always has been under-reporting in export statistics. In fact, every country in the world that collects export stats has that problem because customs administrations don’t give the same amount of policing to exports as they do on imports.”
Exporters are required to fill out an export document called a B13, which is submitted to Canada Customs and then forwarded to Statistics Canada. Either the documents are not getting filled out or they are not being passed along to the statistics keepers. Clancey thinks it’s the latter, Gordon the former.
Gordon said the bottom line is that it’s up to the exporter to fill out the B13. But Clancey said even if the B13s are filled out properly, it requires co-operation between Canada Customs and Statistics Canada to get the information properly rec-orded, “and for whatever reason, someone’s not co-operating.”
Clancey said the real bottom line is that farmers are going to be misled by incorrect export statistics.
Growers may decide there isn’t a big enough export market to warrant planting peas next year. Or they may look at the difference between the large production figures and the small export figures and decide there is an enormous domestic market for feed peas.
Gerald Donkersgoed, a trader with Finora Canada Ltd., said the error is not as much of a concern to the grower as it is to the trade. Growers don’t look to export statistics for their planting plans. They look at price.
“The grower has the price at any elevator, or at any specialty crop company. There’s always a price for his peas for delivery that day.”
