A coalition of Canadian agricultural commodity groups and private companies is applauding the federal government’s aggressive approach to negotiations for bilateral trade agreements.
In March a coalition, representing nine groups sent a letter to federal trade Minister David Emerson warning aggressive moves by competing nations, particularly the United States, in signing bilateral trade deals was eroding Canada’s competitiveness in key markets. In a recent speech, Emerson indicated Canada has rested on its resource laurels falling behind in the race to sign trade deals and announced the federal government plans to accelerate efforts to clinch new trade agreements.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen says, while World Trade Organization negotiations remain key, it is also important to negotiate individual agreements. “Anywhere around the world where we have market access interests we need to spend a little more time and resources on bilateral trade negotiations and not for the reason that we don’t support the WTO negotiations,” said Friesen. “We still think that’s the primary forum where we should be negotiating fair and equitable trade rules. We also recognize other countries are aggressively pursuing bilateral trade agreements. There’s a big risk, in some cases it’s already happened, that Canada would lose preferential market access with countries that were doing these Bilaterals with other countries and so we said it’s extremely important we don’t allow that to happen.”
For Canada to maintain its agriculture industry, to grow it, we need to make sure we have good market access for our export commodities. Friesen notes the coalition has identified a priority list of five key countries and regions that require special attention including China, Japan, the Andean Community, India and Morocco.