When international trade ministers change their tune

Monday, December 6, 2010

When it comes to supply management protections, it seems our trade ministers say one thing in office and another when they retire

by BARRY WILSON

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the annual get-together of former and current international trade ministers, if such an exclusive club existed.

As the French wine flowed, German beer was chilling, Argentine beef was sizzling on the grill and Idaho potatoes were getting close to perfection with a bit of Quebec sour cream and Manitoba bacon bits on the side (these are international trade ministers, after all, with some allegiance to Canada), the talk turns to their days defending Canada's "balanced position" at World Trade Organization (WTO) talks – access for competitive exporters and protection for domestic "trade sensitive" sectors.

Tory ministers Michael Wilson, Stockwell Day, David Emerson and Peter Van Loan probably could agree with Liberal ministers Roy MacLaren, Jim Peterson and Pierre Pettigrew that liberalized trade rocks.

Losers hide behind import protections. Winners like Canada's exporters blast through those weakling barriers and kick ass in those markets.

Then the conversation turns dark as someone asks: Do you remember the day your trade bureaucrats held their noses and said politics required that you defend tariffs of 100 per cent, 200 per cent, 300 per cent for dairy, poultry and eggs while you are on your high horse in Geneva about a 30 per cent tariff elsewhere that keeps our beef out?
 

Feet shuffle. Pettigrew says that, as a Quebecois with family roots in the dairy industry, he understood the politics. Wilson, Peterson and Van Loan concede that, coming from urban Ontario, it was a shock.

Stockwell Day admits that, being from trade-liberalizing and deficit-busting Reform stock, the idea of defending protectionism as a trade minister seemed as unlikely as defending a record government deficit of $56 billion.

A few nervous laughs and head-bobbing ensue. Then the mocking of supply management begins.

While I've taken some liberties with this fictitious meeting, the responses are purely believable.

For years, trade ministers and their negotiators have gone to WTO talks fighting the good fight to support Canada's supply management protections because their political masters told them to. It helped that other countries have their own trade protectionist pillars, but it must sting when negotiators raise their eyebrows as Canada demands access to their grain, meat or oilseeds markets while denying the same to dairy and poultry. But these guys are pros and follow the script. Until they retire. Then, sometimes, their thoughts emerge.

Former chief WTO agriculture negotiator Mike Gifford has been clear in his work with Carleton University that Canada's dairy industry must be prepared for increased international competition and that it can compete if it reforms.

Former Conservative trade minister David Emerson found himself in political hot water when he mused to a Western Producer reporter about the need for supply management to prepare for change and less protection.

But the most explicit break in the supply management support circle yet came in early November when former Liberal minister MacLaren, originally in Geneva for the 1993 settlement of the Uruguay Round of WTO talks that set those high tariffs, argued in The Globe and Mail that supply management protections cost consumers, undermine Canada's international free trade credentials and should be dumped.

"It's past time that such protectionism should go," he wrote. "The consumer has long paid much more than necessary for butter, cheese, milk and eggs."

Most of his mates in the current and former trade ministers' club would never be so bold. Most would agree. BF

Barry Wilson is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery specializing in agriculture.