Wheat board, supply management come under attack at trade table – WP Special Report (story 3)

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Published: September 11, 2003

When Canadian trade negotiators and ministers sit down this week at the World Trade Organization table in Cancœn, they will often find themselves on the defensive.

They will try to keep the focus on demands that trade-distorting domestic subsidies be sharply curtailed and export subsidies eliminated.

But more than ever before, two of Canada’s domestic policies are under attack – the monopoly export powers of the Canadian Wheat Board and high tariffs that protect supply management in dairy, poultry and egg sectors.

The United States and the European Union have joined forces to target both policies, insisting that supply management tariffs be reduced while guaranteed access for imports is increased and demanding that “single desk export privileges” be ended.

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“Without a doubt we will have to spend time dealing with those challenges,” chief Canadian agriculture negotiator Steve Verheul said in a late-August interview from Geneva. “We have some allies but also some powerful opponents on this. It is clear we do not like the wording in some of the texts and will fight to have it changed.”

Negotiators will have no lack of advice on how to handle those two issues during the WTO mid-term meeting.

Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance representatives will be urging negotiators to de-emphasize defense of those two policies in order to gain greater access for Canadian exports abroad.

Supply management representatives will be there to insist Canada must not agree to any weakening of protection.

And a CWB delegation will be there to insist state-trading enterprises should not even be part of the discussion.

“There is no mandate to deal with STEs,” CWB vice-president Victor Jarjour said in an interview. “It should not be mentioned in the text.”

Ottawa agrees.

On the issue of market access and supply management protections, Canada insists its position would increase trade despite the preservation of high over-quota tariffs.

Canada’s protected industries allow imports to fill at least the five percent of domestic demand required by WTO rules. Many other counties have taken the five percent tariff rate quota, applied it sector-wide but still maintained almost complete protection for some specific sensitive products.

Canada is proposing that all products be subject to the tariff rate quota guaranteed access.

“Supply management has actually allowed more trade into Canada than policies in many other countries,” says Manitoba pork and turkey producer Bob Friesen, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. “We should end this myth of getting rid of tariffs as being the only answer and work on practical solutions that actually allow trade to happen. I would be happy to allow a clean five percent of turkey into Canada if I could get a five percent access for my pork into Europe.”

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