Evidence of meeting #13 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was producers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Liberal
Ken Boshcoff Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Honourable minister, with your workload on Bill C-33, I just wonder how you find the time to issue directives to muzzle the employees of the Canadian Grain Commission and their ability to comment on the carnage being planned for them.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
I know it's out of order, and it's constantly out of order.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
I answered this question in question period yesterday. I don't have the time, and I did not get involved. There are thousands of memos flying around the government every day. My nights are short enough without getting involved in those types of things.
That's an internal document, and I understand Mr. Easter had a motion yesterday to bring Elwin Hermanson before the committee. Possibly you could ask that question of the CGC officials when they're here. It is an internal document.
I know he would welcome clarification on that.
Liberal
Ken Boshcoff Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Okay, I'll defer the rest of my time to Mr. Easter then, sir.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
You mentioned, Minister, that there's a very short window to get the shovels in the ground and plants coming up. In fact, I agree with that statement. But in terms of investment to get plant capacity in place in this country, what is taking place in your rural secretariat in terms of the co-op section? Is the federal government willing to share in the costs of the investment that has to be made through co-ops to assist in getting ethanol and biodiesel plants up?
You won't have time to answer this part of my question, but do you have any economic analysis of ethanol and biodiesel that would show us on paper what you expect the bump in prices to be for various crops?
The key question is what are you doing with second generation co-ops to assist communities to make the investment?
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
We're levelling the playing field as much as we can, Mr. Easter, getting regulations down to the point where producers feel they can be involved and not be hamstrung.
There are initiatives for the new generation co-ops, as they're being called, to get these types of plants up and available. Those are also available to folks who want to do flour mills and pasta plants. “Oh, wait a minute—we can't do those yet in western Canada.” Well, we're working on that.
As for the economic analysis, I'd be happy to provide that to the committee. We won't have time to do that now. We'll do a written analysis and submit it, if that's fine with you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
The time has expired, Mr. Minister. Your written analysis in answer to those questions would be greatly appreciated.
We are going to suspend for one or two minutes to allow the witnesses to leave the table and to call our next witness on the WTO.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
I'll call the meeting back to order. We're going to continue with our agenda.
For the next hour we have Steve Verheul, whom we welcome back from Geneva to give us the latest update on what's happening at the WTO. As everybody knows, Steve is our chief agriculture negotiator in the negotiations and multilateral trade policy directorate at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
It's good to see you again, Steve. The floor is yours for opening comments.
Steve Verheul Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone.
My name is Steve Verheul, and I am Canada's chief agriculture negotiator. I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear today to talk about the status of the World Trade Organization negotiations. I'm going to begin my remarks today by reviewing some of the recent developments in the WTO negotiations and what they mean for Canada.
As I think you all know, the WTO Doha Round of negotiations is the key forum through which Canada is working to expand opportunities and achieve a fair international trading environment for Canadian agriculture. In July 2007, the chair of the agriculture negotiations, Crawford Falconer, released a draft text on modalities, which are the detailed rules and commitments we're trying to negotiate for agriculture. Since that time, the chair has been actively challenging members to close gaps and reach consensus on all the key issues.
Throughout the fall of 2007 in Geneva, extensive negotiations took place in all three areas of the negotiations: domestic support, export competition, and market access. We have been in Geneva for more than 12 weeks, since the beginning of September, and these are negotiations that have lasted for very long days and through weekends, so it's been a long haul.
During this period, the chair has taken active steps to move the negotiations forward, including by maintaining the most intensive negotiating schedule we've seen since the beginning of these negotiations almost seven years ago. He's also been issuing working papers under his own responsibility in all areas of the negotiations.
The negotiations in Geneva continue to show significant signs of progress on all fronts, although important gaps and significant technical work still remain in several areas. On domestic support and export competition, most of the issues have been largely resolved, aside from those issues that need political decisions, questions of ambition. Considerable progress has also been made on market access, although there are still some gaps to be closed on the challenging issue of sensitive products in particular, as well as on some market access provisions that relate to developing countries.
Canada is seeking fair international rules and new opportunities for our agricultural producers and processors. Our objectives at the WTO remain the elimination of all forms of export subsidies, the substantial reduction of and strengthened disciplines on trade-distorting domestic support, and real and significant improvements to market access.
Canada is forcefully advancing objectives that will be important to our exporters. Canada is also aggressively defending interests that are important to our supply management sector.
The chair of the agriculture negotiations is expected to release a revised draft of his modalities text in the very near term. At this point we're expecting it tomorrow morning. A text on the non-agricultural market access negotiations will also be released at about the same time. As was the case last July, the revised draft text will be a working document issued under his own responsibility and will not represent consensus views among the members.
As far as next steps are concerned, the negotiations will resume again shortly in Geneva. We expect we will be back late next week and that negotiations will resume in the full week of February 18. Following consideration of the draft text in individual negotiating groups, it is expected that there would then be a horizontal green room room process that would bring agriculture and the other key areas of the negotiations together for negotiation by chief negotiators overall.
WTO members generally agree that if the negotiations are not fully completed by the end of 2008, they will likely slip into a lengthy hiatus. Given all the steps that are involved in completing the round, WTO members recognize that the timeframe for agreeing on modalities for agriculture is quite narrow.
In that context, the WTO director general, Pascal Lamy, will be evaluating in the weeks ahead whether sufficient progress has been made at the negotiator level to warrant convening a ministerial meeting in the spring. Most of the discussion is around Eastertime for a possible ministerial meeting. That will be with a view to reaching a deal.
With these remarks, I would now be pleased to take your questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Thank you, Mr. Verheul.
We're going to stick to the five-minute rounds and are going to start off with you, Mr. Steckle.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
Thank you very much.
It's always a pleasure to have you back at the table, Steve. We've done this many times over the years and we recognize you as one of the world's greatest negotiators. We feel you've been good for us, and given the mandate, I think you'll do the job for us.
We don't know the text yet, so I guess we can't discuss that this morning. But there is already some belief that the text may not have in it what some sectors of the agricultural community would like to see.
The people who are in the trading business like to think that a new agreement would ultimately benefit Canada, and we, at least on this side of the table, would hope it would benefit largely the farm gate, where the product has its beginnings.
You may want to comment on where we are in terms of our presence at the table on the sensitive issues, such as the supply-managed sector, the wheat board, or those kinds of things. Where are we with these, and where might the agreement leave the supply-managed sectors, given that other sectors might get largely what they want out of this agreement?
Where is it going to leave our supply-managed sector?
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I would like a clarification.
Is Mr. Steckle referring to the wheat board as a supply-managed sector?
Liberal
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
As the text comes together and we have a pretty good idea of what we'll see, probably tomorrow, it is shaping up to be a pretty good package for most areas of Canadian agriculture. We're getting a lot of what we want to achieve in export competition and in domestic support or domestic subsidies. We're also doing well in many areas of market access. We probably got more ideas into the text from Canada than from any other country.
We have a particular challenge with respect to supply management in sensitive products. We have a much harder line in the negotiations than any other country has on those issues. We continue to call for no tariff reductions and no tariff quota expansion for supply management. But everyone else around the table has basically agreed on what would happen in terms of both tariff reductions and to a lesser extent, tariff quota expansion for those products.
So we are outside of the emerging consensus on that issue, but we're continuing to make it very clear that our position is no tariff reductions, no tariff quota expansion for supply-managed products.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
Given the uncertainty of our wheat board, and as it is included in one of our sensitive areas, what impact does this situation have on your negotiating capacity in going forward? Does it weaken, or strengthen, or would you say it has no impact at all in terms of where we find ourselves?
If you take one part of that group away and leave your people at the negotiating table with the impression that sensitive products aren't as important at home as the case you're trying to make would perhaps indicate, does this weaken or strengthen your position at the table, or has it no impact at all?
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
It's not having a lot of direct impact. On the wheat board issue our position has been consistent for many years. We've said that these are issues that should be settled domestically, not internationally by the WTO, and we've been working very closely with Australia, New Zealand, and some others on that position with respect to monopoly powers for state trading enterprises.
That issue, I think, is fairly self-contained, and that question won't be resolved until late in the negotiations. Obviously those will be political decisions once they're made.
On supply management we have been taking a much harder line than others, but I think we've certainly been one of the key players in that negotiation, as in all the rest of the negotiations. In fact, we have been leading much of the technical work around sensitive products and have been working very closely with the U.S. and the European Union and others.
So I don't think it has really constrained us. It will get increasingly difficult as we get to increasingly difficult stages of the negotiations, which is where we're now arriving.
February 7th, 2008 / 10:15 a.m.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
And if we look for partnership to reach the kind of anticipated outcomes we would hope for, where do we go for partnership? Who are the countries and the people we would find as our likely partners in supporting us at the table?
Chief Agriculture Negotiator, Negotiations and Multilateral Trade Policy Directorate, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
With respect to the issues of importance of supply management, we don't really have any partners, because others are all prepared to take a certain degree of tariff cuts, a minimum of 22% to 25% tariff cuts. Others are prepared to accept tariff quota expansion of 4% to 6% of domestic consumption. So we don't have a lot of allies in that area.
Other countries have different sensitivities in different areas that they're looking to resolve, so there is always the opportunity of trying to be flexible in one area in exchange for getting greater flexibility in another. But obviously we're going to have a continuing challenge to achieve our position on supply management, with not many allies around the table.