http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadas-dairy-poultry-markets-prized-in-pacific-trade-deal/article4358953/
Canada’s dairy, poultry markets prized in Pacific trade deal
The United States, Australia and New Zealand are demanding unfettered access to Canada’s highly protected dairy and poultry markets a day after inviting Ottawa to join them in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks.Their demands to tear down agricultural trade barriers mean Canada’s supply management system will be in the cross hairs in the TPP talks.
“For Australia, it’s about market access. We have farmers who are very keen – as does New Zealand – to have access, to have the removal of barriers and tariffs,” Louise Hand, Australia’s High Commissioner to Canada, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I guess Australia, like the others, needed to be assured that that was where Canada was coming from.”
The U.S. dairy industry is similarly salivating at the prospect of securing access to the closed Canadian market – which sustains nearly 15,000 farmers and keeps prices artificially high.
“All Canadian trade barriers against U.S. dairy products must be eliminated,” the U.S. Dairy Export Council and the National Milk Producers Federation said in a statement as they backed Canada’s bid for entry as a way to re-open the issue.
The powerful dairy industry quickly served notice to the Obama administration that it won’t back any TPP pact without “full market access for U.S. dairy products in the Canadian market,” said Tom Suber, president of the U.S. Dairy Export Council. Canada’s dairy and chicken farmers are equally determined to preserve the tariff wall and controls on production that shelter the industry from global competition.
The supply management system also requires Canadian consumers to pay an extra $3-billion a year for milk, cheese, eggs and chicken.
But Canada has quietly suggested to TPP countries that any concessions it makes on supply management in the Canada-European Union trade negotiations could become a model for its offer to the other TPP countries, which include the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile and Peru. Mexico, like Canada, was invited to join this week.
While Ottawa has been tight lipped on the details, Matthias Brinkman, the EU’s ambassador to Canada, briefed reporters in April on the negotiations. Rather than abandoning supply management, he said, both sides are aiming to adjust quotas, with a quid pro quo for certain products, such as allowing more European cheese imports in exchange for increased beef exports.
Canadian tariffs on dairy products, which are up to 315 per cent, could be cut by 30-50 per cent and still be “prohibitive,” Mr. Curtis pointed out.
Trade Minister Ed Fast told The Globe in an interview on Wednesday that Canada made no specific commitments to get into the talks, nor has it ruled anything out.
“We’ve made two things very clear: We’re prepared to discuss all issues at the negotiating table,” he said. “And we’ve also made commitments to our farmers. In all of our previous trade negotiations, right from NAFTA on, we’ve been able to satisfactorily resolve these issues and come up with trade agreements that really serve the interests of both sides.”
Australia, New Zealand and the United States were the last three of the nine original TPP members to approve Canada’s entry to the talks. The TPP members were aiming to conclude an agreement this year, but that appears optimistic now.
“Our farmers don’t want barriers on any sector, but this is obviously a negotiation,” Ms. Hand said. The “starting point” is that Canada is committed to “an ambitious outcome” that includes “the elimination of barriers to trade in goods and services,” she added.
Trade experts, and even other TPP countries, acknowledge that Canada’s protectionist supply management system is unlikely to disappear overnight.
But to get to the TPP table, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has put supply management in play. And that will almost certainly mean significant concessions, including allowing more foreign products into a system keeps virtually all imports out.
“Tariff and subsidy elimination means dairy farmers in both Canada and the U.S. will have to face genuine world signals, which neither of them do now,” insisted an official of one TPP country, who declined to be named.
The pressure is not just from abroad. Canadian food makers such as McCain Foods Ltd. and Saputo Inc. want to sell to the Asian market, but can’t buy dairy ingredients here at competitive prices.
“I suspect there will be the beginning of movement on the supply management question – not just because of foreign pressure, but because our own processors are finding it too expensive to manufacture food,” said John Curtis, the former chief economist at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and now an adjunct professor at Queen’s University. “That’s where the real economic pressures are.”
Other experts say Ottawa should be much more ambitious at the talks, and in other trade negotiations. In an upcoming C.D. Howe Institute paper, former Canadian trade negotiator Michael Hart urges Ottawa to phase out supply management unilaterally over 10 years.
“It’s time to be a little braver,” said Mr. Hart, a professor at Carleton University’s Norman Patterson School of International Affairs. “Mr. Harper wants Canada to be a trading nation. Okay, Mr. Harper: just do it.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/trade-talks-aint-what-they-used-to-be-open/article4357725/
Gary Mason
Trade talks ain’t what they used to be (open)
Once upon a time, major international trade pacts were the source of controversy and great debate in Canada.
The North American Free Trade Agreement ignited a national
uprising. On Parliament Hill, opposition parties railed against the
accord’s potential to make Canada the 51st state of the U.S. It made
national figures out of anti-NAFTA crusaders Mel Hurtig and Maude
Barlow.Those were the days.
For a few years now, Canada has been negotiating a free-trade agreement with Europe that is absolutely massive in scope. Ultimately, it could affect everything from health care to the environment. Yet, while the Council of Canadians and a few other groups have been sounding the alarm on the impact this deal could have on the country, theirs have been mostly voices in the wilderness.
Trade talks with the EU have gained little traction nationally. It would seem Canadians will learn what we’ve been signed up for once the deal is announced.
Which brings us to this week’s news that Canada has been allowed provisional entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations – a trade deal much bigger in scale than NAFTA. Along with the United States, Mexico and eight other Pacific countries, the economic partnership would cover a region of 658-million people with a combined GDP of more than $20-trillion. You’ll be hearing those figures a lot in coming months.
And that may be about all.
In fact, negotiations have been going on for more than two years. Canada and Mexico are late entrants. Until now, there has been little information released about what the talks entail. Secrecy has been the trademark of the discussions and will no doubt continue to be.
There has, however, been one leak: a chapter of the proposed agreement involving investment. The Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Public Citizen has been able to verify the text as authentic.
Noteworthy in the draft is the concern that the negotiations are occurring without any oversight by the media or elected officials. This takes on a more troubling hue when you consider that the document indicates negotiators have already agreed on some fairly controversial measures, in particular ones around the rights and privileges of foreign corporations.
According to Public Citizen, the trade deal would limit the extent to which signatory countries could regulate foreign firms operating within their boundaries, effectively giving them greater freedoms than domestic firms.
It also reveals that all of the countries except Australia have agreed to terms around the operation of foreign tribunals, which would arbitrate disputes. The tribunals would be staffed by private-sector lawyers who would rotate between acting as judges and acting as advocates for the investors who might be suing a particular government over a TPP-related matter. Talk about a potential conflict of interest.
And these are just a few of the more contentious issues discussed in the leaked draft. There are others. Lots of them. And remember, this is just one chapter of what we can only assume are several.
Of course, this doesn’t make any proposed deal bad. There’s little question that such a pact has tremendous upside for Canada. If Japan joins the negotiations – and China and India down the road – the potential of this Pacific partnership becomes even greater.
But the clandestine nature of the talks is concerning. As are reports that Canada and Mexico – as part of the terms of their prospective entry into the club this week – were told they could not reopen any parts of the deal that had already been agreed upon by the original nine member countries. And that we might have abided to that stipulation without even seeing the existing draft document. (Although that seems beyond belief.)
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada has not agreed to any specific measures. But we can only guess what that means. Just as we can only guess what such a trade agreement would ultimately do to the business life of this country and everything that flows from it.
Back in the day, the thought of that would have caused a real commotion in this country. Maybe no longer.
For a few years now, Canada has been negotiating a free-trade agreement with Europe that is absolutely massive in scope. Ultimately, it could affect everything from health care to the environment. Yet, while the Council of Canadians and a few other groups have been sounding the alarm on the impact this deal could have on the country, theirs have been mostly voices in the wilderness.
Trade talks with the EU have gained little traction nationally. It would seem Canadians will learn what we’ve been signed up for once the deal is announced.
Which brings us to this week’s news that Canada has been allowed provisional entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations – a trade deal much bigger in scale than NAFTA. Along with the United States, Mexico and eight other Pacific countries, the economic partnership would cover a region of 658-million people with a combined GDP of more than $20-trillion. You’ll be hearing those figures a lot in coming months.
And that may be about all.
In fact, negotiations have been going on for more than two years. Canada and Mexico are late entrants. Until now, there has been little information released about what the talks entail. Secrecy has been the trademark of the discussions and will no doubt continue to be.
There has, however, been one leak: a chapter of the proposed agreement involving investment. The Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Public Citizen has been able to verify the text as authentic.
Noteworthy in the draft is the concern that the negotiations are occurring without any oversight by the media or elected officials. This takes on a more troubling hue when you consider that the document indicates negotiators have already agreed on some fairly controversial measures, in particular ones around the rights and privileges of foreign corporations.
According to Public Citizen, the trade deal would limit the extent to which signatory countries could regulate foreign firms operating within their boundaries, effectively giving them greater freedoms than domestic firms.
It also reveals that all of the countries except Australia have agreed to terms around the operation of foreign tribunals, which would arbitrate disputes. The tribunals would be staffed by private-sector lawyers who would rotate between acting as judges and acting as advocates for the investors who might be suing a particular government over a TPP-related matter. Talk about a potential conflict of interest.
And these are just a few of the more contentious issues discussed in the leaked draft. There are others. Lots of them. And remember, this is just one chapter of what we can only assume are several.
Of course, this doesn’t make any proposed deal bad. There’s little question that such a pact has tremendous upside for Canada. If Japan joins the negotiations – and China and India down the road – the potential of this Pacific partnership becomes even greater.
But the clandestine nature of the talks is concerning. As are reports that Canada and Mexico – as part of the terms of their prospective entry into the club this week – were told they could not reopen any parts of the deal that had already been agreed upon by the original nine member countries. And that we might have abided to that stipulation without even seeing the existing draft document. (Although that seems beyond belief.)
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada has not agreed to any specific measures. But we can only guess what that means. Just as we can only guess what such a trade agreement would ultimately do to the business life of this country and everything that flows from it.
Back in the day, the thought of that would have caused a real commotion in this country. Maybe no longer.
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