We certainly intend to meet that objective.
Evidence of meeting #8 for International Trade in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was negotiations.
Evidence of meeting #8 for International Trade in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was negotiations.
3:45 p.m.
Director, Services Trade Policy Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (International Trade)
We certainly intend to meet that objective.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Your time is up, Monsieur Paquette.
Now we'll go to the government side, to Ms. Guergis.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
Helena Guergis Conservative Simcoe—Grey, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today. We appreciate your taking the time.
We hear and read a lot of doom and gloom in the papers about the current Doha Round negotiations. Is it really as bad as the papers say? Is there a drop-dead date, or could these negotiations actually go on for some time yet?
3:50 p.m.
Director General, Multilateral Trade Policy Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (International Trade)
The negotiations are in a very difficult situation and we have a very short time to reach agreement on some very major items, starting with agriculture and NAMA, because we didn't meet the Hong Kong deadlines for agreement on the modalities that would be the basis on which those negotiations could be concluded in detail—the formula reductions, and the terms of export subsidy elimination, in the case of agriculture.
So we have been, and still are, in a period of intensive and continuous negotiation in those two areas, which will continue through next week, at which time the chairs of those two negotiating groups are to submit texts, taking the decisions on modalities as far as they can. It is expected, and the director general of the WTO has suggested, that a group of ministers should gather informally in Geneva at the end of June to finalize the decisions on modalities in agriculture and NAMA.
Then we really have only one more month to put together a package based on the modalities in those two areas and the progress in all of the other areas—services rules, trade facilitation, and the interests of developing countries under special and differential treatment—and have that package on the table by the end of July. If we can't do that, it would be impossible to meet the Hong Kong timeline to conclude the negotiations by the end of 2006.
There's a tremendous amount of technical work that will have to be done in the fall by every member of the 149 members of the organization to schedule all of their commitments in all of those negotiations, and then for all of the members to verify one anothers' commitments. One of the lessons we learned from the results of the Uruguay Round was that by not having sufficient time to verify the commitments made to live up to the obligations of the negotiation, a lot of questions were left unanswered or a lot of issues arose, which then had to be resolved, either through dispute settlement or further negotiation. We would want to avoid that again.
So we're really up against tight deadlines.
3:50 p.m.
Conservative
Helena Guergis Conservative Simcoe—Grey, ON
What non-agricultural market access sectors in Canada would benefit most from a successful negotiation at WTO?
3:50 p.m.
Director General, Multilateral Trade Policy Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (International Trade)
NAMA includes industrial products, and also fish and forest products. We believe that all Canadian exporters in the non-agriculture sector would stand to benefit and that we, as an economy, as well as individual exporters, would stand to benefit by having the opportunity to diversify exports to the markets beyond the United States where we don't enjoy preferential access and where we still face very high tariffs.
3:50 p.m.
Conservative
3:50 p.m.
Director General, Multilateral Trade Policy Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (International Trade)
Examples in the European and Japanese markets would be forest products, fish products, non-ferrous metals; in the major developing countries, examples would include many manufactured industrial products, such as aircraft, automotive parts, and pharmaceuticals. There are lots of examples and lots of opportunities for Canadian exporters to enhance access in a whole range of markets.
3:50 p.m.
Conservative
Helena Guergis Conservative Simcoe—Grey, ON
It sometimes seems as though the exporters are versus the supply management operators when you're talking about negotiations. Is it really like that? Are the two against...?
3:55 p.m.
Director, Multilateral Trade Policy Division, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
In Canada, as in most other countries, especially those that have a large and wide-ranging agriculture sector, it's natural to have subsectors with different interests. I think that's what you're seeing playing out.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Helena Guergis Conservative Simcoe—Grey, ON
Do you think there has to be a loser here, or can we still have a strong supply management system in Canada for those who wish to operate under it, while at the same time exporting more of our non-supply-management products? Do you really think we can manage this?
3:55 p.m.
Director, Multilateral Trade Policy Division, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Certainly the objective is to ensure that we get the market access our export-oriented sectors need and that we get the trade-distorting subsidies down in the United States and the E.U. That will help not just our exporters but our domestically oriented industries as well, because of the impact it could have on world prices. The elimination of export subsidies obviously would very much help our export-oriented sectors, because they'd be able to operate in a marketplace that's fairer.
So there are a lot of benefits out there for the export-oriented sectors in the agriculture negotiations. For many of them, that's where the negotiations are actually heading, and Canada and other countries continue to push it there.
June 7th, 2006 / 3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Ted Menzies Conservative Macleod, AB
Thirty seconds? I can hardly get anything done in thirty seconds, but I will try.
I've harped on this before: we tend to forget the fact that this is a development round. The only gain we got in Hong Kong was to reach a 97% quota-free, tariff-free level for least developed countries. Have we improved that? Why didn't we get to 100%, or is there any hope of getting to 100% to help these developing countries?
3:55 p.m.
Director General, Multilateral Trade Policy Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (International Trade)
In the market access opportunities for least developed countries, which is the initiative you're referring to you that was agreed in Hong Kong, 97% was the number insisted on by two of our trading partners, the United States and Japan. That was as far as they could go in offering duty-free, quota-free access to least developed members.
For developing members as a whole, we believe the greatest gains to developing countries, aside from the least developed, are going to come from the core negotiations: agriculture, non-agriculture market access, services, trade facilitation and rules. And we believe they will realize benefits from enhanced access to both developed and other developing markets, because 70% of the trade among developing countries is with other developing countries, and they face very significant barriers in developing trade-developing measures.
The extent to which those barriers are brought down is going to be significant, but the extent of their access to developed markets is going to be very significant, if we get ambitious that it come into this round.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you very much.
The last questioner in the seven-minute round will be Mr. Julian.
Before we go to him I want to mention that we are having two meetings today. This meeting will end at 4:30. We'll have a two-minute break and go to the next meeting. We also have a couple of motions to deal with, but we'll deal with those at the end of the meeting, so please don't leave.
Mr. Julian, you have seven minutes.
3:55 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to come back to the issue of supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board. It hasn't been at all clear to me exactly where we're going, particularly with supply management. As you know it's critically important to the maintenance of family farms across the country.
Last year we met with the chief negotiator, who said essentially that Canada was looking at about 12% of our agricultural receipts coming from the supply-managed sector, that the U.S. was pushing to reduce the level to 1%, and that the agreement would be somewhere between the two—which, if you extrapolate, would mean half the sector could be given up on the table.
Today in the House of Commons in question period, the Minister of Agriculture in response to Mr. Bellavance, when he asked if the minister could confirm that Canada will not give up one inch, said, “I think I've just said that.”
We have here a contradiction between what the chief negotiator has said and what the MInister of Agriculture has said. I would like to have, for my own mind, a very clear sense of where we're going.
Do you have explicit instructions not to sign any deal that would impact on the supply-managed sector in any way?
4 p.m.
Director, Multilateral Trade Policy Division, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Your question is similar to the question that was posed earlier about the selection of sensitive products and the 12%, 1%. That's not a percentage of farm cash receipts or revenues, but it's actually a percentage of the tariff lines.
So how large, if you will, would the sensitive products box be? As I said earlier, there is obviously a variance in the size of that box that countries want to see, and yes, the U.S. did have a proposal on the table that only 1% of a country's tariff lines could fit into the sensitive products category. As I've said, we've obviously been pushing to ensure that the box is large enough to fit all of our tariff lines for sensitive products. There are countries that want a larger sensitive products box than we do, and there are countries that want a smaller one. As I said earlier, there hasn't been a final decision on that yet. It's still under negotiation, the size of that box.
4 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
Yes, but my question is still a valid one: are the instructions to not sign a deal that would imperil any part of the supply-managed sector?
4 p.m.
Director, Multilateral Trade Policy Division, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
The government has taken a very hard line in defence of the issues that are important to supply management. At this point, we have no intention of changing that position.
4 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
Yes, but my question is still: are there explicit instructions not to sign a deal that would do that? You see, there's a difference between approaching the negotiations with the sense that you're going to give up part of a sector and approaching the negotiations with an absolute hard line that we won't sign the deal if it impacts on supply management.
4 p.m.
Director, Multilateral Trade Policy Division, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
The government and the ministers have been very clear that we're going to stay at the table in the negotiations and not walk away from the WTO. I think you've heard that from the ministers, and our minister has certainly said that also.
4 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP Burnaby—New Westminster, BC
Okay. So the answer is no, that you do not have—no heckling please—explicit instructions not to sign a deal that might give away a portion of that sector.
4 p.m.
Conservative
