Canadian farmers who depend on export markets should be worried about Canada’s ability to negotiate a good trade deal with the European Union, considering the poor deal negotiated with Peru, says an influential Liberal senator.
Percy Downe, a Prince Edward Island senator and former chief of staff to prime minister Jean Chrétien, argues that Canadian negotiators did a bad job for exporters when they created a free trade deal with Peru that took effect last summer.
Despite the Conservative government’s emphasis on bilateral trade deals, it has done a poor negotiating job, said Downe.
Among the worst served are farmers, he argued in an Oct. 29 interview.
He suggested it happened because Canada considered the Peruvian deal low priority and sent low-level departmental officials to negotiate.
“Peru was very motivated to get a free trade deal so if this is the best we can do with a partner that wants a deal, I think we are in some trouble,” said Downe.
“It is a mystery because the government has bilateral trade deals as a priority and yet this deal suggests they are not paying much attention.”
He said the deal with Peru was a disaster for Canada, especially in agriculture.
Potato farmers as well as beef and pork exporters received less favourable access than did exporters from the United States, leaving them at a competitive disadvantage.
For example, Peruvian tariffs on American potato imports were eliminated immediately under a U.S.-Peru deal while Canadian exporters beyond the seed market have a decade to wait before tariffs are completely eliminated.
For pork producers, the U.S negotiated a five-year tariff phase-out while Canadian producers must wait 17 years.
Downe noted that the Canadian senate’s foreign affairs and trade committee, on which he serves, complained that the U.S. agreement gives American exporters the same access Peru offers in future to other free trade partners. Canada did not obtain the same grandfather clause and will find itself falling behind other countries and the U.S., said the committee.
In a commentary published last week, Downe argued that before Canada gets too deeply involved in free trade talks with the European Union, the government should accept that it negotiated a poor deal with Peru and learn from that the experience.
Free trade talks with the European Union began in October.
House of Commons trade committee testimony last week also suggested that Canadian negotiators won less favourable access to the Colombian market for agricultural products than did the Americans, although both trade deals remain unapproved and mired in congressional and Commons politics.
Downe said the Canadian government must send its strongest negotiating team possible to each trade negotiation because the result sends a message to other negotiations.
“The Canadian government needs to bolster its negotiating team, bringing in the very best from the public and private sector,” he wrote last week in a trade commentary.
“Rather than defensively deny that mistakes were made in negotiating with Peru, it needs to instead learn from those blunders to avoid repeating them. This may be one of those times in our history when swallowing a spoonful of pride can save our country from choking on a deal with the European Union, one that can cost us for generations to come.”
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