Special Reports Editor
IMAGINE a late-night meeting sometime around November 2002, probably in Geneva.
Canadian negotiators at the World Trade Organization talks have summoned supporters of the Canadian Wheat Board to ask their advice.
Negotiations are down to the final weeks, the United States and Europe have cut a deal and there are implications that state trading enterprises will face severe restrictions and a phase-out of single-desk marketing as an impediment to the natural working of the free market.
What should we do? ask the negotiators.
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And oh, by the way, making concessions on the CWB would mean greater access commitments for your grains and products abroad.
This is the kind of scenario being raised by New Democrat agriculture spokesperson Dick Proctor, who believes the CWB will not survive the next round of WTO talks despite the government vow to protect it. American pressure will be too strong.
CWB defenders and government types will dismiss this as scare mongering but history suggests it is not a bizarre scenario.
Just consider a week of meetings in Geneva in December 1993 between government negotiators and supply management representatives flown in for consultations.
The message was simple: despite government vows to defend quantitative import restrictions allowed under Article 11 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and considered crucial to the survival of supply management, the defence was over.
Canada was isolated and had to concede defeat. The Americans and Europeans had cut a deal that replaced quantitative import restrictions with high tariffs that would be less predictable and ultimately would fall.
What should we do?
Practically, supply management leaders knew the government would not walk away from a comprehensive trade deal that offered export benefits to many sectors, just to protect them.
They agreed the fight for Article 11 was over and supported the highest tariffs possible.
It gave the supply management industry a decade or two of breathing space while tariffs fell, until the border opened.
Industry leaders still insist they have a future. Realistically, those Geneva meetings were a death warrant for supply management.
Will aggressively export-oriented Canadian Wheat Board supporters face the same fate some dark Geneva night in late 2002?
It is certainly possible, since Canada has so little to trade this time in agriculture.
Imagine the arguments: Let us keep domestic orderly marketing and we’ll abolish export subsidies! Oh right, we killed the Crow in 1995.
OK, let us keep orderly marketing and we’ll cut production-supporting subsidies! Oh right, we have already cut three times more deeply than anyone else, well beyond our commitment.
When it comes to the hard bargaining, Canada may find it already has given away most of its chips.
Proctor’s pessimism has a ring of credibility, if the Americans do use the next trade round to target the Canadian Wheat Board.
