OTTAWA (Reuters) - Trade Minister Jim Peterson said on Wednesday Canada will not open up its highly protected domestic dairy and poultry sectors, despite calls for more open markets and further delays in world trade talks.
The International Monetary Fund, in its annual review of the Canadian economy, on Wednesday urged Ottawa to further ease import barriers, especially in agriculture, which Peterson said was an oblique reference to its supply managed farm sector.
"Our agriculture programs are minimal in comparison to the massive subsidies we see in the European Union and United States," Peterson told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"They are so minimal in terms of the overall scope of discussions that no, they are not on the table at all."
He said the latest delay in discussions on a Free Trade Area of the Americas, pushed back to April 22-23 from next week, due to lack of progress in farm trade liberalization, was unlikely to be the final setback in the negotiations.
"The ideal would be to have the whole issue of agricultural subsidies dealt with at the World Trade Organization," he said.
Talks on the FTAA reached an impasse last month when negotiators could not agree on the outlines of discussions.
But Peterson said he hoped both FTAA and WTO trade talks could resume meaningfully this year after U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick urged U.S. Congress on Tuesday to comply with WTO rulings that it repeal corporate tax breaks ruled illegal and quash the so-called Byrd amendment.
That amendment requires the Bush administration to distribute money raised by anti-dumping duties to firms that asked that the duties be imposed.
Previously, those revenues went into the general U.S. Treasury.
"I commend him for his efforts. He's doing exactly what we think the United States should be doing," Peterson said.
"In terms of the Byrd amendment, we are proceeding to see what we would need to retaliate. Having said that, this is not our preferred course of action, we would like to see the Byrd amendment repealed," he added.
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