Tariff won’t pick on most Canadian chickpeas
OTTAWA • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent trip to India may have caused a diplomatic row, but he insists it had nothing to do with India’s decision to hike tariffs on chickpeas this week — and he has good reason for saying so.
Canada’s industry group for chickpea growers says the type of chickpea Canada specializes in is in fact exempt from the most recent tariff increase.
“Ninety-five per cent of the chickpeas grown in Canada are kabuli variety,” said Madeleine Goodwin, head of communications for Pulse Canada. “Agriculture Canada has informed us that kabuli chickpeas are exempt from today’s tariff increase.”
Agriculture Canada did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation.
On Friday, Trudeau had called the tariff hike “a domestic choice by India” that affects Australia more than Canada, and said his discussions with India Prime Minister Narendra Modi focused particularly on a dispute over fumigating Canadian exports for pests.
That didn’t stop his opponents from drawing a connection to the trip, as Conservatives called for Trudeau to apologize to Canadian farmers. But one independent expert who watches the sector closely agreed the tariff hike was unrelated to Trudeau’s follies in India.
“There is no way that there would be any link between Trudeau’s visit and this decision to increase the import duty on chickpeas,” said Brian Clancey, an analyst with Vancouver-based Stat Publishing. “The country that is principally affected by that is Australia, which sells hundreds of thousands of metric tonnes of chickpeas to India per year. We sell a few thousand. Russia is a more important supplier of chickpeas to India than Canada.”
He said the big concern with the tariff hike is whether it’s followed by further hikes on products Canada does export a lot of to India, such as yellow peas and red lentils. Pulse Canada said Canada’s annual chickpea exports to India have averaged $5 million over the past four years, compared with about $500 million each for both peas and lentils.
India’s sudden tariff hikes began in November, when it imposed a 50 per cent tariff on peas and then followed up in December with a 30 per cent tariff on chickpeas and lentils. It then hiked the tariff on chickpeas to 40 per cent on Feb. 7, and to 60 per cent on Thursday. Goodwin said her understanding is the earlier tariff hikes still apply to kabuli chickpeas, but not the most recent one.
Clancey said the moves are part of a push by Modi’s government to give political support to farmers and make India self-sufficient in pulses.
The controversy started because the new tariff hike follows closely on Trudeau’s recent seven-day visit to India. The trip resulted in a diplomatic incident when a Liberal MP invited Jaspal Atwal, a Canadian man convicted of trying to assassinate an Indian cabinet minister in 1986, to a dinner hosted by Canada’s high commission.