Thank you, Mr. Chair and members, for hearing us today on important matters concerning the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement.
Since sugar beet is a relatively rare crop in Alberta and Canada, I'll briefly describe our background. We are called the Canadian Sugar Beet Producers' Association Inc., which was founded in the 1940s. At that time, sugar beet production occurred in five provinces of Canada. What I represent here today is the balance of the integrated industry that exists in southern Alberta on irrigation. About 250 farmers produce sugar beet in southern Alberta.
We have transformed ourselves greatly in the last few years and now operate off the open market for our revenues, which is why the terms of trade agreements are very important to us. It should also be noted that since the 1995 crop, there has been no price support on sugar beet in Canada. In 1995, the sugar beet farmers in southern Alberta voted unanimously to ask the federal and Alberta governments to end our price stabilization program. Since that time we've changed our business to survive off the market.
This plays into our general opinion on free trade agreements. We want to participate in international markets, and we want those markets to be open on free and fair terms. To date, our experience with free trade agreements that have been negotiated has not been good. I can use the analogy that we're the untold chapter of the Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist. When Oliver goes and asks for “more, please”, the big cook behind the kettle grabs our gruel and gives it to Oliver. That's been our experience with free trade--it's one-way trade. Canada has been unsuccessful in negotiating the greater access we want.
Before the modern era of free trade agreements, we had free trade in sugar with the United States, and that was negotiated away to nothing. We've grown that to 10,300 tonnes of raw value of sugar, which has to be beet sugar from southern Alberta. So our main advice to the Government of Canada, as it's negotiating a free trade agreement with Colombia, is that we don't want the unsuccessful pattern in sugar negotiations that has occurred to date to repeat itself. Colombia has a fully modern sugar industry. It is very competitive. It is one of the highest production-per-acre areas in the world. There's no reason, as there might have been in some of the smaller negotiations, to give asymmetrical access to our trading partner or not give us any access at all.
We think it's very important in this negotiation to stand by a few general points when talking about sugar. First, we think that any tariff-free quota negotiated with Colombia should be limited to a very small volume, and I'll explain why. The TRQ should be implemented over a long timeframe, and Canada should maintain its normal refined sugar tariff on any volume above the tariff rate quota that is negotiated with Colombia.
Most importantly, we should have reciprocal access. If Colombia can sell sugar at better terms than Canada, we should be able to sell sugar to Colombia. Colombia does import a lot of sugar, and there is no reason why Canadians should not participate in that market. It has to be reciprocal access. If we give a tonne of access to our market, we need a tonne in the Colombian market. So we would not favour asymmetrical access or even zero access.
There are a couple of things on the general topic of what this committee is looking at that I thought would be of interest, and they come from the Colombia Sugar Annual 2008, out of the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. We don't have to look at Colombia and say the only thing they can do with land that's in cane production is produce cane and sell it to Canada. There is ethanol sugar beet in development, which would allow two crops a year to be grown on perennial sugar cane land. One crop of ethanol beet would produce ethanol for fuel for local inhabitants, and the second crop could be produced on that land as a food crop for the people in Colombia. So I don't think we have to accept any Colombian position that the only thing we can do is take this cane sugar and sell it in Canada.
I'd also point out that Colombia has a sugar price stabilization fund. There's a levy on internally consumed sugar in Colombia that would directly or indirectly be an export subsidy on sugar sales to Canada and other parts of the world. Both Colombia and our association are members of the global alliance for liberalized trade in sugar, and we should be very cautious about what Colombia might do with that sugar price stabilization fund because we operate off the world price of sugar in Canada. It would almost be automatic that some draw would be put on that stabilization fund to finance either the Canadian exports or other exports to the world market that would in effect have an export subsidy.
In summary, then, we would like real free trade. We don't want to see a repeat of Costa Rica, where we got asymmetrical access and the Government of Canada said we could probably grow potatoes because we're getting french fry access into Costa Rica. Well, the french fry imports were stymied in Costa Rica.
And as Mr. Friesen can attest, at a CFA trade committee last fall, we were talking with a potato farmer from Prince Edward Island who said we can't get our potatoes to Trinidad and Tobago any more because they're coming from Costa Rica. We lost out on a triple play in that Canada-Costa Rica free trade agreement on agriculture, starting with the poor negotiating position for sugar.
I guess all I can say is, “Some please”. That's our attitude to free trade: yes, we want to participate.
Those are my comments, Mr. Chairman.