IN politics, timing sometimes is everything and that’s probably the best explanation for the way Canada’s latest defeat at the hands of American wheat protectionism has played out on Parliament Hill.
More precisely, how it has not played out on Parliament Hill.
The American decision to effectively block imports of hard red spring wheat by imposing punishing countervail and anti-dumping duties was announced Oct. 3 but by listening to political debate on the Hill in the immediate aftermath, it would have been difficult to tell.
In question period Oct. 3, shortly after the announcement that affects more than $200 million in exports, there were two short questions from Winnipeg New Democrat Bill Blaikie and agriculture critic Dick Proctor. On Oct. 6, the next opportunity, the issue did not surface at all.
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If they care at all, it is easy imagining westerners seeing this as yet another example of Eastern Canadian indifference to western issues. There are other more benign explanations for the deafening silence on the issue.
The ruling came the day after two Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. The parliamentary opposition has been consumed with trying to pin blame on the government because the soldiers were riding in a poorly armoured jeep when they were killed by a land mine.
Dead troops, the sorry Liberal record on buying modern military equipment and the debate over Canada’s overseas peacekeeping commitments trump the latest twist in an ongoing trade dispute every time.
It is no offense to affected wheat farmers to note that the biggest agricultural issue on the Hill and in the minds of western MPs this autumn is the cattle industry crisis.
Duties at the American border mean the Canadian Wheat Board may have to sell more wheat into less lucrative markets elsewhere. The beef blockade is a multi-billion dollar headache without that alternative.
On Oct. 3, Alliance MP Rick Casson, from the centre of southern Alberta’s feedlot alley, used his question period time to challenge the government commitment to beef industry support.
Since the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative parties oppose the CWB monopoly, it will be difficult for them to wax poetic about the latest American rebuke of Canadian wheat policies.
The government has launched a challenge of the ruling under the North American Free Trade Agreement, moving it somewhat from the political sphere into the semi-judicial world.
Still, there are politics to be played and hopefully some of the eventual debate will revolve around the most sensible idea to emerge – an argument from the National Farmers Union that NAFTA or the World Trade Organization should have a “three attempts and you’re out” provision that would prohibit repeated challenges based on the same evidence.
Until last week’s partial victory, the United States had lost nine challenges out of nine. It is difficult not to agree with the NFU conclusion that this is harassment.
This week, trade minister Pierre Pettigrew was singing the praises of the 10th anniversary of NAFTA. Hopefully he also is working quietly with Mexico to win an ally for an attempt to negotiate a limit to the number of times national trade law can be used to challenge the same issue, hoping each time to find more sympathetic judges.
