by SUSAN MANN
Dairy Farmers of Canada is reassured the federal government won’t ditch this country’s supply management system to gain access to the Asian-Pacific regional trade negotiations.
Dairy Farmers spokesperson Therese Beaulieu says in announcing that Canada wants to join Tran-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement talks, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the federal government isn’t willing to pre-negotiate anything.
“Joining the TPP does not mean getting rid of the system,” she says.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is an Asian-Pacific regional trade deal being designed to enhance trade and investment, promote innovation, economic growth and development plus support job creation and retention. It’s being negotiated by the United States and eight other countries – Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Canada, Japan and Mexico have said they’d like to join the negotiations.
Beaulieu says the TPP is similar to the Canada-European Union trade talks that are going on now where everything is put on the table unlike previous trade negotiations where Canada was able to remove supply management at the beginning. In the European talks, supply management hasn’t come up yet because there are so many other matters in the negotiations.
For the TPP, “basically we’re looking at it as there will be talks, there will be pressure” for Canada to axe its supply management system, she says. But the federal government has said it supports the system and it will continue to defend it at trade talks.
Dairy Farmers’ view of how Canada will join the TPP talks differs from recent reports in several major Canada daily newspapers and articles on their websites that said the federal government is considering putting supply management on the table so Canada can join the negotiations.
During the past few weeks, several pundits have called on the federal government to kill Canada’s supply management system and have said that dairy farmers are preventing Canada from joining the TPP.
But Dairy Farmers says in a press release the system hasn’t stood in the way of Canada’s ability to successfully negotiate trade agreements in the past and is unlikely to do it in the future.
The supply management system for Canada’s dairy, poultry and egg farmers is built on three pillars – production to match demand, pricing that allows farmers to receive a fair return from the marketplace, and import controls.
In its release, Dairy Farmers says Canada is far more generous in the amount of imports it allows than most other developed countries. Canada imports more than six per cent of the dairy products consumed here. The Americans import about three per cent of the dairy products consumed there while in Europe it’s even less. BF
Comments
When Chuck Strahl was federal Ag Minister, he asked DFC what their "Plan B" was if supply management ended - not only did DFC not have a Plan B, they didn't even understand the concept, and still don't.
More to the point, what is it about the word "trade" in trade talks, that DFC just doesn't understand?
Trade means giving up something to get something else, and even though anyone goes to any sort of trade meeting with things they don't want to give up, sometimes the needs of many outweigh the needs of a few, and things get traded - just ask anyone who's divorced.
In addition, the subleties of the rhetoric tell the story - while the Canadian government claims it will defend supply management, they don't say they will walk away from the talks if they have to give it up - and that is a crucial point DFC is hoping nobody will notice.
Don't anyone kid themselves - there's an art to writing, and even reading, press releases, and this one makes it abundantly clear DFC is scared out of their minds at the moment, and so they should. Or if they're not scared, they really should be.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
DFC will continue saying there's no threat to supply management until the day after it's various board members have had a chance to put their own quota on the market.
How can we have so many positions and keep the story straight? There is the protected NAFTA position and protected WTO position and now a different TPP position?
While our fine prime minister will do what he can to save Canada's beloved chicken, egg and dairy producers, if the supply-management system that's made their agricultural sector hugely profitable for as long as anyone can remember has to go over the side for the benefit of the commonwealth, well, so be it.
Que sera, sera, guys -- better sell the farm or at least the quota while there's still some value in it.
In other words, this is what Mark Twain might have called "a stretcher" ... that is, a yarn that has some appeal but that lacks a certain relationship to the truth.
This is also known as a "porky" where the story-line is fatter than the truth, the only connection to the reality of agriculture government is becoming increasingly familiar with
The reality of agriculture is that NAFTA was then, TPP is now. And really, what else could we have expected Stephen Harper to do? Everybody knew the Dairy Farmers of Canada, and their 12,000 members were, up until last weekend, holding the entire country hostage. That situation simply couldn't last, and thankfully, didn't.
I fully expect Stephen Harper will get more letters from hog and livestock farmers thanking him for his initiative, than letters from dairy and poultry farmers opposing it.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The supply management people are being set up by Harper. He will come back and claim "the TPP made me do it" while crying allegator tears.
Why would anybody buy quota now when any realist knows it will be worth nothing in a couple of years?
After all if they are willing to trash the Wheat Board, which does not control price, ability to produce or really even market access for grain farmers, why would they go out of their way to protect the much more invasive supply management system?
Their stance on the CWB shows it is all about ideology, not popularity.
At the moment, it's hard to tell whether government is the greater fool for claiming they won't negotiate supply management, even when it's going to be "on-the-table", or farmers for believing them.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
There is definitely a threat to dairy farmers, just read the star. If all the different farm organizations don't stick together we will all lose.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1090460--the-mil...
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1089581--is-the-price-of-mil...
"Sticking together" will be impossible - many farmers, particularly those who believe we need the type of trade deals membership in TPP can bring, were elated by Mr. Harper's initiative to join TPP, even if it meant putting supply management on the table.
Furthermore, once supply management is "on-the-table", and therefore, by definition, "negotiable", if Canada loses a trade deal which would be of benefit to our livestock and hog farmers, for no other reason than because we won't negotiate any part of supply management, our hog and livestock sectors will be furious, not just with supply management, but with every farm organization currently insisting supply management is simply "not negotiable".
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Post new comment