The chair of Manitoba Pork Council is applauding news that Canada and the European Union have reached a tentative free trade agreement.
Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada and the European Union have reached an agreement in principle on a comprehensive trade agreement that will significantly boost trade and investment ties between the two regions and create jobs and opportunities for Canadians.
Once ratified and implemented the agreement will result in the immediate elimination of approximately 98 per cent of all EU tariff lines.
Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch says the European Union is a very large market and he’s confident increased access to that market will result in reduced reliance on other export markets and greater returns to pork producers in Canada.
For years Canada was fairly reliant on the U.S. markets and then we tried to divert away from that into other markets.
Canada ships to a number of countries around the world.
Manitoba also is really reliant on the exports as we export 85 percent of what is produce.
When you’re exporting to countries like Russia, you export to Australia, all these types of countries sometimes you run into issues.
It has to be free of this or free of that, you run into animal welfare issues, environmental issues so exporting is always a challenge.
You want to make sure that you have access to a lot of countries so you have some options.
Any time you’ve got more options and if you do run into a challenge in say for example in Russia when maybe you’ve got opening opportunities in Europe that’s always a huge benefit any time that you do create yourself more opportunities.
Kynoch applauds what the federal government has achieved in reaching this agreement.
He acknowledges there will be certain requirements that Canadian exporters will need to meet in order to be approved to export into the EU and, once the deal has been ratified and details of the agreement become more clear, companies will be in a better position to begin working on meeting those requirements.
