Evidence of meeting #38 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was negotiations.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
With respect to potential new markets for Canada, disregarding the United States, with which we have very significant trading relations, which regions of the world should we be concentrating on more?
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I don't think we're in a much different position from most of the countries around the world. We see the emerging markets in developing countries as being where the real growth is going to take place. Certainly China is going to be important; India is important, as is Brazil. The emerging economies in the developing world are where most of the new markets are going to be developed, and that's where we're focusing, as well as on other countries in Asia.
The European Union is of interest, but it's a much more difficult market to get into, as they have various means of maintaining and protecting their own market. It's a rich market where we need to expand our access, but it's always a more difficult fight.
But overall, similar to the U.S., I'd say that our biggest interest is in the emerging developing economies.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
The United States has stepped up its bilateral agreements with other countries. Canada's strategy is less focused on that approach.
In future, if the WTO negotiations don't look promising, will we have to consider bilateral agreements in order to protect our trade?
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Yes, I think we certainly have heard from industry and various others that we should be having a more ambitious bilateral negotiating agenda, and we have been pursuing that.
We've been advancing bilateral negotiations with Korea, as you know. We've also been negotiating with a group of Central American countries and with Singapore, as well as with the European free trade area, which includes a number of northern European countries. All of those negotiations are advancing at the moment. We're also hoping to initiate new negotiations with the Dominican Republic, with a group of Caribbean countries, and with some of the Andean pact countries in Latin American, particularly Peru and Colombia.
So we are trying to have a much more ambitious bilateral agenda, and we see that as complementary to our efforts at the WTO, not in opposition to them.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
Canada's position at the WTO seems clear enough for us to be able to adopt a solid position as a negotiator. In the next few years, is there a risk that all the other countries negotiating at that table may change positions, or do they seem to be relatively firm?
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I think that certainly the position we've been carrying in the negotiations has been quite consistent over the years. Other countries have changed. I think the biggest factor, though, probably even bigger than shifting country positions, is the notion of the groups that are now negotiating at the WTO. We have the G-10, the G-20, the G-33, and the African group. We've got negotiation among a series of groups, which is an important change from the way things were done in the past when we had a handful of countries doing the negotiations. We now have a series of groups, so that makes it more difficult in some ways to have a unique position as Canada has, and to try to advance that in the negotiations.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
You nearly took the words out of my mouth, but I'm nevertheless going to ask you which countries would be likely to align themselves naturally with our position.
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
What we've been trying to do is really work informally with a lot of different countries and different groups to try to advance our objectives. We've had particular success in doing that with the so-called G-20. That's the group led by Brazil and China and India. That group has probably really become the most powerful group in the negotiations outside of the U.S. and Europe. In fact, many of the negotiations are between the U.S., Europe, and this G-20 group.
We have formed particularly strong relationships with Brazil, and we have been negotiating common positions on various issues with Brazil. We've also worked fairly closely with India on a number of issues, and with other developing countries as well. We're trying to influence various groups. We've also worked with countries in the so-called G-10, which is Japan and Switzerland and others. We have very close relationships there and some issues in common. We've been trying to work with the various groups that are involved and trying to feed ideas in and advance our objectives in that way.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
Do you think the negotiations will continue for two, five or 10 years before a global consensus is eventually achieved, or that they'll be ongoing?
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I hope it doesn't go on too long. It's been going on for a long time already, and the prospect of it going on for years and years to come doesn't really enthuse me.
I think there's going to be a strong effort to try to break through it this spring and to see if we can put together a fairly ambitious agreement. The aim would be to try to finish it by the end of the year and probably implement it within a year after that. That's fairly ambitious, but it can be done. Otherwise, I think we are into a longer, drawn-out negotiation, and that would take a number of years. If we do conclude within the next year or so, I think there won't be a lot of interest in jumping right back into another full-scale negotiation. It's very complicated, it takes a long time, and progress is difficult every step of the way.
Conservative
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
In terms of ambition, Steve, is there any thought to bringing in labour rates and health and safety standards for workers within countries? If you look at what's happening in the auto industry right now, that's one of the reasons our auto industry is going down.
With regard to environmental standards, we have farm environmental plans in this country, but in Brazil or Argentina or China, theirs are much lower. We're competing against countries under so-called free trade rules, or WTO rules, compared to which we are at a very distinct disadvantage.
So in terms of ambition, is there any thought of bringing up those factors and putting them on the table? There wasn't for a while, but is there any thought of putting those factors on the table? I think they're crucial to this country as we move ahead, especially labour and environment, not only for agriculture but for the industrial manufacturing base as well.
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
There certainly was some discussion of those issues when the agenda for the negotiations was first agreed to in Doha in 2001. At that time, at the end of the day, it was decided that neither labour nor environmental standards issues would be included as part of the negotiations, so that has remained the same to this point. That really established a mandate for all countries for the negotiations.
This is part of the debate in the U.S. in relation to trade promotion authority. Many in the U.S. want the U.S. to adopt labour and environmental standards in their bilateral agreements, but they recognize it's not going to be possible at the WTO.
One area that we can get at least some of the environmental issues is with respect to the green box provisions of the agreement on agriculture, which we are trying to clarify and in some cases tighten in order that environmental programs truly do benefit the environment.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I actually think those two sides of the equation now, as we're into more and more the environmental factors, are perhaps every bit as important to agriculture as they are to other industries. We didn't see them that way, I don't think, four or five years ago, but they certainly are today.
A number of us from both government sides--not on this committee but the Canada-U.S. Parliamentary Association--were in Washington two weeks ago. There's no question in my mind, having spent about three hours with the chair of the House Agriculture Committee, that the members in the House are far from where Secretary Johanns is. I really think there's a willingness on the administration's side to try to cut back on the subsidization. There is certainly not on the political arm in the House. That's a problem for us.
Given the proposals that were on the table, I think the discussion in Hong Kong was perhaps the farthest we were ahead to getting an agreement. I think we fell back since that time. Then there was strong pressure for us to basically go to tariff reductions where we favoured tariff quota increases. In negotiations, especially with the United States, and they're our major competitor, we met our tariff quota increases. We lived by the previous agreement; the United States didn't. Yet they want us to start at where we now are instead of their coming up to where they're supposed to be.
Where are we on that side of the discussion, or did the motion in the House completely put that off the table? I mean, we might as well be frank about it, because if it did, it did. Where are we at on that area?
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
There are still discussions ongoing that don't directly relate to the motion in some ways. There are discussions about how you administer tariff quotas--whether you make it open to all--and certain practices that countries have adopted that minimize imports under specific quotas. We're trying to come up with rules on that. Much of that relates to what's already been agreed in the past and trying to improve the rules around that. So those discussions are ongoing.
On the issue of Canada having fulfilled its commitments on tariff quotas, I think it's clear that at the end of the last negotiation none of us really followed the guidelines that were set out at that time. There were many dairy products for which we have not provided access, and certainly not the access that we were supposed to provide at that time, just as the U.S., the Europeans, and others have not. We're not boy scouts in this, but neither is anybody else. It's all about trying to find a way to get to some rules, so that we are all required to play the game the same way.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
The fact of the matter is, I think we provide greater access into our markets, and we're accused of being protectionist, than the Americans allow into theirs, and they're believed to be free traders. Is that not correct?
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
In the case of dairy, we provide more access to dairy, or at least we did in recent years, than the U.S. provides to its dairy market.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
You revealed that, for lack of support, the proposal that Canada had previously defended, that, before any other concession, all countries should be required to provide real access to their markets equivalent to five percent of domestic consumption, was discarded. With the resumption of negotiations, could we resume that position? Do you intend to do that?
