Manitoba Pork is encouraging the province’s agriculture minister to stress the importance of trade when he meets later this month with his federal provincial and territorial counterparts.
Representatives of Manitoba’s agricultural commodity groups met last week to offer input to Provincial Agriculture Minister Ralf Eichler as he prepares for the next federal, provincial, territorial agriculture ministers meeting later this month.
Manitoba Pork Chair George Matheson says maintaining a strong export base is critical to the pork industry.
We’ve found that this current government has really wanted to work with the pork industry in Manitoba. They realize that, considering the numbers we export, it’s very important to us.
We very much like the way NAFTA has worked for us in the past. We would like to see it continue the way it is. A great deal of American pork flows into Canada and on the other side a lot of Canadian pork and hogs flow into the U.S. so we would like to see that continue unrestricted.
We have expanding trade deals in China. That’s been very important to us. Of course Japan is very important to us as well and the Trans-Pacific Partnership that did not come to completion last year is still important to us, as is CETA, and if we can’t do a group deal with a group of counties we would very much like to see the government focus on unilateral trade agreements. The provincial government has really been on board with regards to the pork exports out of this province.
~ George Matheson, Manitoba Pork
Matheson notes 60 percent of the pork produced in Canada and 90 percent of the pork produced in Manitoba is sold outside of this country.
