OTTAWA -- Canada is prepared to allow foreign farmers greater access to its supply-managed dairy, poultry and egg markets to help break a stalemate in World Trade Organization talks, but will fight off what it believes will be strong attempts to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board, officials say.
Senior federal trade officials say Canada would only agree to trim back barriers to foreign access of supply-managed markets if other countries offer up the same concessions too.
"We're prepared to move to a common minimum volume of quota," one official said.
"[But] if we're providing access for say 5 per cent of our value of production for dairy or cheese, for example, then the U.S. should be providing the same kind of volume into their markets and Europe should be providing the same kind of volume into their markets," he added.
Canada could lower barriers to these markets by raising the volume threshold at which tariffs kick in on foreign imports of milk or cheese or poultry, or it could scale back the tariffs themselves. Ottawa is not prepared to abandon supply management, however, officials said.
Trade and agriculture ministers from up to 26 countries will huddle in Montreal from Monday to Wednesday next week to try to salvage the so-called Doha round of global free trade talks that have become deadlocked in advance of major WTO meetings this September in Mexico.
Agriculture is a major stumbling block because developing countries are angry that industrialized nations have not made good on pledges to cut barriers.
Canadian officials warned that the Canadian Wheat Board, which markets domestically grown grain abroad for this country's farmers, will come under heavy attack in trade talks by the world's two largest trading blocs.
"We obviously have a difficult fight ahead of us on the wheat board since the U.S. and Europe have both been pressing hard on this issue," the same trade official said. He said Canada believes that "we have a very strong position" in defence of the wheat board and, more importantly, that the trade round launched in Doha, Qatar, in late 2001 gave countries "no mandate" to eliminate it.
Both Brussels and Washington are trying to put the elimination of the wheat board "on the table" in WTO talks but Ottawa is resisting.
Veteran Ottawa trade consultant Peter Clark said it's going to be a struggle at Cancun to get serious agriculture trade reforms despite the flexibility of countries such as Canada. He characterized the chances of meaningful reforms in Mexican as "slim to none" because negotiations are expected to take longer.
However, a senior Canadian trade official said that European farm aid reforms unveiled in July "have the potential to break the [WTO] stalemate."
The Montreal gathering is the last meeting of WTO trade ministers before Cancun. Poor countries want major concessions because they feel they got a raw deal in the previous Uruguay round of talks that concluded in 1994, when they granted access to their own markets and agreed to freer global trade rules.
Trade watchers say Montreal will play a crucial role in determining whether the latest round of trade talks, the first new set launched in 15 years, have to scale back their ambition in the face of renewed protectionist sentiment.
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