This is a tale of an earnest Canadian meeting, an elaborate exercise in which federal and provincial governments “dialogue” with Canada’s food industry about trade.
The question is, are they speaking the same language in this dialogue? Is there an unspoken bottom line behind the words?
At a conference centre a few blocks from Parliament Hill this week, several hundred food and farm sectors representatives gathered Monday to wrestle with issues of trade strategy.
Most of the discussions were held out of the public eye, presumably to spare Canadians the sight of Canadian food sectors fighting among themselves over whose interests should be served in a trade deal.
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A gaggle of federal ministers spoke, pleading for common ground, promising not to trade one sector against another and insisting Canada will carry a “balanced position” to the talks, supporting both exporters and import-sensitive sectors wary of broad-based tariff reductions. They will emerge to state the basis for compromise.
Except on a very general level, this is a questionable assertion.
Exporters generally say there can be common ground but the priority must be to reduce trade barriers.
Supply management sectors say there can be common ground but there must be no concessions on Canadian tariff protections.
As there was in 1993, there is a fundamental contradiction between the two positions, a contradiction which the government so far has been able to ignore by speaking in hopeful generalities.
The realities of the bargaining table will end the luxury of ambiguous generalities. Once that happens, there can be little doubt where the priority will lie.
Since getting elected in 1993, the Liberals have been trade-obsessed. They set trade goals, promote freer trade, sign deals and proclaim trade results to be one of the benchmarks by which to gauge Liberal prosperity.
In a trade negotiation in which the choice is between defending high import tariffs or winning greater export market access, exports will win nine times out of nine.
Of course, the government cannot say that just yet. For the moment, it must continue to voice support for supply management. The strong Liberal eastern Canadian rural caucus strongly favors the system, and it notes that as unregulated market sectors plead for government aid, supply managed sectors are an oasis of stability.
But it also is true that the 1995 implementation of the last world trade deal marked the beginning of the end for tariff-protected supply management.
By the nature of the trade negotiation business, those tariffs will fall over time and supply managed industries will be exposed to the low-price forces of the world. It is a question of when the system will disappear, not if. It is a question of how far the next negotiations will push the process along.
A major policy issue for the next government will be whether to design a multi-billion dollar quota buy-out scheme like the Crow Benefit buyout to try to compensate supply management farmers for accepting the inevitable.
But don’t expect to hear that from your government for awhile yet.
