Ritz's letter to greenhouse growers lost in the mail?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

The federal government’s response to Ontario’s greenhouse growers request for help has gone missing, delaying action to combat an influx of cheap peppers from Holland.

Mark Shelford, a trade policy analyst with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) says Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz sent a letter advising the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers that the Canadian International Trade Tribunal and the Canadian Border Services Agency are responsible for anti-dumping investigation. If the industry suspects goods are being dumped and causing an injury, it can file a complaint with Border Services, which could investigate, he says.

Shelford could not immediately confirm when the letter was sent.

As of Monday, the letter hadn’t arrived at the industry organization’s offices in Leamington, says Len Roozen, the organization’s chairman.

The growers had written Ritz about the situation in May.

The problem emerged this spring when Dutch peppers started entering Canadian and U.S. markets at prices “well below the cost of production,” says George Gilvesy, Greenhouse Growers’ general manager. A five-kilogram case of peppers that would cost about $18 to produce and $6 to transport is being sold for about $12, he says.

Dutch producers are unable to obtain insurance for shipments to Eastern Europe and Russia so they’re turning to a market they’re “at least going to get paid for, which is North America,” he says.

It’s a fallout of the recession, says Gilvesy.

Ontario’s industry feels the pressure not only in Canada, but also in the U. S. market to which it ships roughly 70 per cent of its cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes.
 
Gilvesy confirms that asking the federal government to initiate trade action is “one of the options we’re looking at.” Changes to Canadian Food Inspection Agency powers and priorities as well as giving the agency more resources, is another. “There’s a whole host of policy options that we believe the government has.”

The organization has not considered mandatory country of origin labelling. But such legislation would close a loophole that allows buyers to acquire imported produce without stickers for less money, says Gilvesy. COOL legislation “would not allow for the opportunity to misrepresent that product as Ontario-grown or Canadian,” he says.

He says the U.S. legislation, introduced last year, has not had an impact on Ontario’s greenhouse industry, which is the largest cluster of vegetable greenhouses in North America.

Roozen says he wasn’t aware that advising to file a complaint would be the federal approach. “I would have assumed they would have come at it from a number of different policy perspectives and offered us support through AAFC and the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) to help deal with this,” he says.

He calls border action complex, costly and high profile. “We think there are better ways to handle this.” Diplomatic negotiations with the Dutch government is one, he adds.

Roozen says the organization would not pursue a complaint without first seeing the letter. “If you’re telling me the response they’re sending me says ‘go to the Canadian Border Services Agency, then we’ll take that to our board and make a decision.” BF