IT HAS been a political fiction that lasted longer than seemed possible.
Since the Mulroney government put together a negotiating position for the Uruguay Round of trade talks almost two decades ago, the official Canadian trade position has been to pursue aggressive foreign market opening for Canadian exporters and to thwart attempts by foreign exporters to get into sections of our agricultural economy that are import-sensitive.
Generations of trade ministers and agriculture ministers have insisted there is no contradiction and that the interests of one type of agriculture will not have to be traded away for the benefit of another.
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Oh, and by the way, there is no, absolutely no, tension between exporters and import-averse sectors. They all buy into the “balanced position” because both sides would benefit.
Remarkably, the fiction that high levels of protection could be exempt from trade liberalizing talks and that Canadian agricultural interests are one big happy family was maintained for years.
True, both Conservative and Liberal ministers in the lead up to the end of the Uruguay Round recognized that supply management protections could not be excluded but that didn’t erode the official position that they could be in future.
And true, there was some private grumbling from export interests that so much government effort was expended trying to protect supply management that the resulting deal for exporters was less than half a loaf. But in the interests of political correctness and national unity, they mainly kept those thoughts among themselves.
Last week changed all that as do-or-die days appear to be getting closer at the World Trade Organization.
Western premiers and agriculture ministers went public with a complaint that government obsession over protecting supply management was eroding the chances of getting a good deal for western exporters.
Probably coincidentally, the same week agriculture minister Chuck Strahl said the “no change in supply management protections” stance was not viable any longer. Some reduction in protection is inevitable.
Kaboom.
The Bloc Québécois, whose goal in life is to find evidence that Canada is bad for Quebec, pounced on the sequence of events like a dog on an open wound. The Conservatives are selling out Quebec farmers to appease westerners, they screamed.
The National Farmers Union and former NFU president and now Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter piled on. The NFU said the western political leaders had “betrayed” farmers, consumers and the environment.
In the middle of this mess is Strahl, who is getting a taste of the underside of trade politics in a country that lacks a national agricultural vision or consensus.
He gamely says he is western and supply management is big in his riding but that won’t pacify whichever side figures they lose in the WTO.
As a right wing economist and Reform Party member, Stephen Harper once opposed supply management.
As a middle-of-the-road Conservative prime minister trying to woo Quebec voters, he supports supply management.
Strahl, an evangelical, can only hope for Divine intervention to give him the wisdom of Solomon.
