OUR TRADE RECORD IS AT RISK
Another round of trade talks for the TransPacific Partnership, and once again, Canada is embarrassing itself.
Twenty-one members of the United States Congress recently wrote to Canada’s ambassador saying “It is our understanding that Canada has long been unwilling to seriously engage in market access discussions regarding dairy, despite its commitment upon joining TPP to adhere to its high standards.” U.S. Ambassador Bruce Heyman has warned that Canada can’t play this game forever.
The talks began this week in Maui; trade ministers join on July 28. Canada’s government has persisted in stubbornly resisting substantive changes when it comes to its supply-managed agricultural sectors, including dairy.
The government is trying to embrace two ideologies at once: It is pro-trade and pro-supply management. These are incompatible positions, and eventually Stephen Harper will have to choose between them. So will the opposition parties, if they ever find themselves in power.
Canada acts as if it would be some great concession if it allowed more imported cheese or milk products. Imports are not a price countries pay for the benefits of trade; imports are a benefit of trade. One cannot be “pro-trade” and regard imports as an evil. Exports are a prize for certain (obviously influential) sectors in any country, which is why producers and negotiators speak of “access” to Canada. But imports are a prize for the country as a whole, including many businesses. For example, restaurants and processors benefit from access to food imports.
So far, the Conservative government has tried to make its ideologies meet somewhere in the middle. For example, it agreed to allow more cheese imports as part of its trade deal with Europe. Chipping away at the walls around supply management bit by bit like this is the worst of all possible policies. It is unfair to farmers, who have to live with the constant uncertainty with each trade deal.
Whoever forms the next government will have to choose: Do we finally sit down with farmers and come up with a fair, stable way to change the current system, and create a competitive agricultural sector that can see trade as an opportunity, not a threat? Or do we accept that our trade negotiations will always be slower, more arduous and less fruitful than they need to be — and that we might indeed be sidelined altogether?
“It will be difficult for us to support Canada’s inclusion in TPP if significant new dairy access is not part of the deal,” wrote those members of Congress.
All countries have their forms of protectionism to dismantle. But our government wants to carry on arguing that several wrongs make a right. That stubbornness threatens to blot its record on economic and foreign policy.