The General Manager of Manitoba Pork is calling on the federal government to stand up for Canadian agriculture in the face of a growing trend toward protectionism in trade.
Cam Dahl, the General Manager of Manitoba Pork, says with the pending renegotiation of the Canada US Mexico Agreement, we’re seeing a growing indication of protectionism.
In particular our trade with the United States has ramped up in importance and that’s because of a couple of measures. We have proposition 12 in California and similar measures in other states where that legislation is telling farmers in Manitoba how they have to raise their pigs if that pork is sold in California. It’s really fractionating the integrated North American market, having to have barns that meet California’s requirement but might not meet Massachusetts’ requirement or vice versa. It makes it really difficult and expensive and that costs consumers at the end of the day and also costs farmers.
Then we have Country of Origin Labelling which is set to come into effect again. The changes that the U.S. just announced are really going to discriminate against Canadian weanlings and Manitoba weanlings moving into the U.S. Manitoba ships three million isoweans into the United States every year. The animals alone are worth half a billion dollars and then you add on top of that the jobs and all the feed that farmers buy. It’s a big bill and there’s going to be significant discrimination if the current regulations go ahead as they’re written. So, we really do need to our government to engage on these specific issues as well as the renegotiation of the Canada U.S. Mexico trade agreement.
~ Cam Dahl, Manitoba Pork
Dahl notes we’re seeing a rise of America first and protectionism from both sides of the political spectrum in the U.S.
