Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has pledged to lay out details on trade pact compensation for supply-managed sectors before the federal election in October.
The pledge comes as the federal Liberals face pressure from supply-managed sectors and the federal opposition Conservatives to deliver on compensation for access granted to the Canadian market under Canada’s free trade pacts with the European Union and Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Compensation for supply-managed sectors in the wake of the CETA and Trans-Pacific deals has been pledged since well before the previous federal election in 2015.
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“These agreements are in place and their negative impacts can already be felt by the dairy sector across the country,” DFC president Pierre Lampron said in a statement Friday, at the end of the federal/provincial/territorial agriculture ministers’ two-day meeting in Quebec City.
Details and allocation on compensation “are essential to restore stability and confidence in the dairy sector,” he said.
However, he noted, during the DFC’s annual meeting last week in Saskatoon, Bibeau “committed to providing the details of the compensation package before the end of the federal government’s current mandate.”
DFC, he said, “is holding the minister to account to follow through on her commitment.”
The Conservatives’ agriculture critic Luc Berthold, in a separate statement Tuesday before the ag ministers’ meeting, said Bibeau “promised Canadian milk, egg and poultry farmers that a compensation plan would be in place by June 30, but the Liberals have blown past their own deadline and failed to deliver any of the $3.9 billion farmers are counting on.”
With the next federal election coming up Oct. 21, he said, “the Trudeau government would rather play politics and delay compensation for their re-election campaign than deliver on their promises. Justin Trudeau must finally release the compensation details promised to Canadian farmers so they can finally receive the support they need.”
Bibeau, in a separate statement Sunday, said the federal government “with the collaboration of representatives from supply-managed industries, is working hard to put in place funding mechanisms that meet the needs of producers.
“We are committed to unveiling the details of the compensation before the end of this mandate, and we will begin to get processes underway to ensure the sector can benefit from it as soon as possible.”
Bibeau reiterated Ottawa has committed up to $3.9 billion for supply-managed farmers in response to the CETA and CPTPP trade agreements and is “also committed to a second block of compensation that will come after the ratification of the new NAFTA,” also known as the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement or CUSMA.
Berthold said Tuesday the lack of details on compensation “comes as no surprise since the Liberals have been failing our agriculture sector for the last four years — raising taxes, making concessions to Donald Trump during NAFTA negotiations, failing to stand up for Canada when China banned meat, soy and canola seed exports, and leaving our farmers with greater uncertainty.”
Bibeau retorted Sunday that “nearly half of Conservative members are in favour of seeing the supply management system in Canada dismantled. While the Conservatives wanted us to capitulate on NAFTA, we did not give in to Conservative calls to abandon our supply managed farmers in response to very strong American attempts to see it dismantled.”
The government, she said, “did not take lessons from the Conservatives, and instead we have safeguarded more than $2 billion a day in cross-border trade and tariff-free access to our No. 1 market for Canadian exports.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network
