WINNIPEG — It’s time for Canada to get tough dealing with its biggest trading partner, the president of Manitoba Pool Elevators said last week.
“I think we’re going to have to start fighting fire with fire,” Charlie Swanson told Lyle Vanclief, parliamentary secretary to agriculture minister Ralph Goodale.
Vanclief told board members for Prairie Pools Inc. at a meeting in Winnipeg last week that the federal government is continuing negotiations with the United States over wheat exports, despite the fact that country has launched an International Trade Commission (ITC) investigation.
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While Canada wants a negotiated settlement, it will not accept voluntary restrictions under the threat of Section 22 action imposed by the ITC, Vanclief said.
“The facts (of that investigation) will not support the need for trade restrictions.”
If that’s the case, Swanson said, why negotiate?
“I think if we have that confidence … let’s let the ITC (investigation) proceed,” said Swanson.
He also suggested Canada let the U.S. know, in no uncertain terms, it will retaliate if attacked with trade sanctions.
“I don’t think we’re going to win by negotiating. They come back and say they want just a little bit more.”
Karen Moore Fegley, a Washington-based representative of the National Association of Wheat Growers, told delegates that attention in her country is increasingly shifting to include all wheat imports from Canada.
“The increase in Canadian supplies are tending to interfere with our farm support programs for wheat in the United States,” Fegley said, noting some wheat “dumped” into the U.S. market this year was sold for $1.47 per bushel less than U.S. market prices.
Fegley said her industry will continue to push for trade sanctions against Canada domestically as well as using its Export Enhancement Program against Canada in the Mexican market until Canadian Wheat Board activities are curtailed.
“We have to use the tools we have available to us,” she said.
It is “absurd” that the Americans must use $40 per tonne subsidies to compete against Canada in the Mexican market, which is 4,500 kilometres away from the Canadian prairies, she said.
“We want the games — the strengths, they (the CWB) have as far as forward pricing to more closely resemble the marketing system in the United States.”
