Hong Kong trade talks key
Negotiations on agriculture deal may be doomed Supply system crucial to Canada, minister says
Next week’s world trade talks in Hong Kong are too important to the province’s economy and its second largest industry to be missed, even if the negotiations seemed doomed to failure, Ontario’s agriculture minister says.
In fact, Leona Dombrowsky may spend more time in Hong Kong than the country’s chief negotiator. Her priority at the talks will be to ensure that the supply management systems governing egg, poultry and dairy industries do not become a bargaining chip in a scramble to reach a deal in Hong Kong.
“ There’s no question that supply management has come into the discussions,” Dombrowsky told the Toronto Star yesterday. Canada has been on the defensive through more than 20 years of free trade talks on both supply management and the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. Both the United States and Europe, the main players at the negotiations, have pushed to gut the programs in return for cutting their own agricultural subsidies.
Prairie agriculture ministers will be in Hong Kong to advocate on behalf of the wheat board, which will have its own representatives at the talks, while Dombrowsky says she will be there to ensure that supply management is not tossed into the ring in the “scramble” to reach a pact.
“ We all want a good deal to come out of this,” she said. “ But we all want to be vigilant to ensure that the industries in our provinces and in this country are not negatively impacted.” While the provincial politicians, under World Trade Organization rules, cannot sit at the negotiating table, they will form part of the backroom team for the federal negotiators, Dombrowsky said, advising the federal ministers of trade and agriculture on strategy and policy alternatives. One option under consideration to get negotiations moving is to let countries designate certain food products as “ sensitive products,” allowing them to take extraordinary measures to protect those industries. Dombrowsky said Brazil might choose to declare beef sensitive, while Japan, which has long been pressured to open up its rice industry, might declare that industry sensitive. Canada could choose its supplymanaged industries, Dombrowsky says, giving Canada a tool to spur along the negotiations without having to give up one of its central farm policies.
“ It’s not an all- or- nothing option,” she said. During the last successful round of world trade negotiations 20 years ago, Canada helped break an impasse by agreeing to make a key change to how supply management operates. Strict import quotas were replaced with high tariffs — up to 300 per cent — that kept foreign imports out of the market. Under supply management, farmers negotiate the price to be paid for milk, eggs, chicken and turkey. Those prices are maintained by managing the supply of the farm produce through farmer quotas and preventing cheap imports from flooding the market.
Aspokesperson for Dombrowsky’s office said there could be limits placed on which industries can be declared sensitive, and how much of those industries could be protected.
In fact, the 148 countries going to Hong Kong have yet to agree on allowing such a designation at all.
“ There really is no provision for this as of yet,” said the spokesperson, who did not want to be identified. “ It’s just part of the discussion to try to move things along.” The talks heading into Hong Kong have been deadlocked, with the United States and the European Union pushing each other to make deeper cuts in subsidies, and both sides resisting. Developing countries, meanwhile, want greater access to industrialized markets. The current round of negotiations was launched in Doha, Qatar, in 2001 after an attempt to get the talks started in Seattle two years earlier ended in failure. By now, the countries had hoped to be finalizing discussions on what subsidies would be cut, with negotiations through 2006 on how to make those cuts. But with most observers now expecting that no such targets will be set at this month’s meeting, an emergency session will likely be needed in early 2006. Negotiations close at the end of 2006, with little hope that they can be extended beyond that deadline. Dombrowsky leaves Dec. 13 for the talks, and returns Dec. 20, leaving more than a day after the close of meetings on Dec. 18 to “ debrief” on what was accomplished.