Politicians in Washington shouldn’t have been surprised this year over the amount of Canadian grain moving south, despite complaints to the contrary, according to a senior Canadian agriculture bureaucrat.
Senior United States administration officials knew as early as the end of July that Canada’s grain exports would exceed 1.5 million tonnes.
And Canada will not even concede that U.S. import figures are correct, according to Canadian deputy agriculture minister Frank Claydon in a letter to Robert Smith, chair of the U.S. House of Representatives agriculture committee.
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“There is some confusion about the precise numbers, as it appears that Canadian wheat trans-shipped through the United States to other foreign destinations may be being included in U.S. import figures,” he wrote. “Officials are continuing their efforts to clarify, if this is the case.”
Claydon was responding to public complaints from Smith that by shipping more than 1.5 million tonnes, Canada was violating a promise from the deputy minister that it would not exceed limits placed on exports during a one-year 1994-95 agreement to limit trade.
The Canadian official said the American administration understood that Canada was not accepting any artificial cap on exports. It simply was offering a prediction on export volumes.
“In any discussions we have had with the U.S., we have always tried to be scrupulous in categorizing any numbers as estimates or projections of how supply and demand factors for wheat in the North American market might play out in terms of our bilateral trade flows, while maintaining that these numbers neither constituted nor implied any kind of limitation,” Claydon wrote.
He was responding privately to a Sept. 25 letter from Smith, released in Washington, in which the politically powerful Republican accused the Canadian bureaucrat of reneging on a spring promise to honor the 1994-95 maximum.
Claydon and Smith met in Ottawa earlier this year, and again in Washington, to talk about trade issues and irritants.
When Smith made his accusations in Washington during public committee hearings on Canada-U.S. trade, Canadian officials in Ottawa said it was a simple misunderstanding.
More or less
In his letter of rebuttal, obtained by The Western Producer, Claydon noted that in late July, trade minister Sergio Marchi told U.S. trade representative Charlene Barshefsky that exports would be greater than 1.5 million tonnes but less than 1.7 million.
At the beginning of September, the same message was conveyed to American officials.
“In fact, although our estimates have not been finalized yet, current indications are that the final figure will be slightly above 1.5 but less than 1.6 million tonnes,” wrote Claydon.
