THE buildup to Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th United States president was a cartoonist’s delight and one of the wittiest cartoons involved shoes.
The caption was: “Now the hard part begins.” The drawing showed a pair of size 11 feet trying to fit into a pair of size four slippers.
Difficult shoes to fill indeed.
Whoever becomes the new Canadian agriculture negotiator replacing the departing Steve Verheul may feel a bit like that. Unlike many bureaucrats whose work affects farmers where they live, Verheul leaves his job this month with praise from almost all sides of the farm trade spectrum.
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That is no mean feat, considering that on the WTO file, Canada’s “balanced position” actually puts the trade negotiator in the awkward position of defending competing domestic objectives – promoting better foreign access for those products Canada can competitively export while defending barriers to imports for domestic sectors that are not competitive with cheaper world supplies.
It is a treacherous high wire and while the official line from a succession of Canadian governments is that almost all WTO negotiators have offensive and defensive interests to protect, no other country wears its domestic divisions on its public sleeve as much as Canada.
For many countries, internal conflicts in trade strategy are fought internally with a unified position presented in Geneva. In Canada, the competing export and protectionist sides duke it out in Geneva, much to the bewilderment, amusement or irritation of foreign trade negotiators subject to the same repetitive conflicting Canadian farm lobby arguments that they have heard so often over the years.
Verheul, a junior in the Uruguay Round of world trade talks before 1994 and the chief negotiator for more than a decade in the latest WTO round, has been able to walk that high wire.
He is no miracle worker, delivering desired results to both sides of the divide. He tells exporters there are limits to access they can expect and Canada is not going to abandon protectionist supply management.
He tells supply management they are going to be losers in any WTO agreement because tariffs will fall and guaranteed tariff rate quota import access will increase but he is doing the best he can to get them the best deal possible.
Despite mixed prospects, Verheul tends to get a standing ovation from both sides.
The trick may have been his honesty and hard work.
He didn’t, in Liberal MP Wayne Easter’s phrase, “sugar coat” the reality of what is possible and what is not.
He did not wrap his explanations in the arcane language of the trade negotiator tribe that excludes from the debate those irritating little folk affected by trade deals by inventing an incomprehensible language of modalities and zeroing and special safeguard mechanisms.
He was accessible to media and farm groups, transparent and understandable.
This sounds like a logical job description for any official negotiating deals that affect folks on the ground.
Sadly, it is a rarity, not the norm.
Verheul will head Canada’s efforts to negotiate a free or freer trade deal with the European Union, a nice promotion.
Let’s hope his successor has at least size 10 feet.
