Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa | Reuters –– Trailing in second place with two weeks left before Canada’s election, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a new trade deal Monday that largely protects the key agricultural voting bloc, putting pressure on opponents who had hoped to have more to attack. Harper touted the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a good deal […] Read more
Election shifts attention to trade deal as race narrows
Canada says TPP offers limited access to dairy market
Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa | Reuters — Canada said on Monday that a major trade deal agreed by 12 Pacific nations would only allow limited access to protected Canadian domestic dairy and poultry markets, a politically sensitive issue ahead of the Oct. 19 election. Officials said the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would offer up just 3.25 per cent of […] Read more
Canada to pay farmers for any losses under TPP deal, Ritz says
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — Canadian farmers will receive government compensation for any losses resulting from a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, the country’s agriculture minister said Wednesday in a discussion about the nation’s protected farm sectors. The U.S., New Zealand and Australia want Canada to start dismantling a system of supply and import controls over dairy, poultry […] Read more
Supply management the hot button at ag debate
Reading Time: 3 minutes CNS Canada — Representatives from Canada’s five main parties met Wednesday in Ottawa to discuss and debate farm policy ranging from risk management to transportation and rural infrastructure ahead of the Oct. 19 federal election. The hot button issue of the debate, however, was Canada’s supply management systems for dairy, poultry and eggs. The topic […] Read more
Farmers, upset over TPP talks, take cows to Parliament
Reading Time: 2 minutes Ottawa | Reuters — Unhappy Canadian dairy farmers parked dozens of tractors in central Ottawa and walked their cows down the main street opposite Parliament on Tuesday to protest trade talks they said could cripple them. Canada is one of 12 Pacific Rim countries trying to nail down a trade deal in Atlanta this week. […] Read more
Dairy farmers milk politics of Pacific trade pact
Reading Time: 3 minutes Reuters — New Zealand dairy farmers have a message for their Canadian counterparts, who worry a Pacific trade deal will throw them on the mercy of world markets and devastate their industry: It’s not so bad. But heavily protected Canadian farmers have reason for skepticism. A deadlock over dairy has emerged as one of the […] Read more
Canada will not negotiate TPP in public: Ritz
Canada also paying attention to U.S. subsidy programs
Reading Time: 2 minutes Canada’s agriculture minister says Canada won’t negotiate in public when it comes to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the proposed wide-ranging free trade agreement among a group of Pacific Rim countries. Responding to questions at an unrelated event in Winnipeg last week, Agriculture and Agri-food Minister Gerry Ritz said Canada has put forward strong proposals […] Read more
Trade ‘balancing act’ in focus at ag ministers’ meeting
Reading Time: 3 minutes With foreign governments urging Canada to open up its protected dairy, poultry and egg markets, the country’s provincial agriculture ministers are unanimously counter-urging in supply management’s defense. Pressure from trading partners and strong regional support in principle for supply management are nothing new. But Canada’s annual ag ministers’ meeting, held this week in Charlottetown, wrapped […] Read more
U.S. said considering TPP trade deal without Canada
Reading Time: 2 minutes Washington | Reuters — The United States, frustrated over the lack of progress with Canada over new rules for agriculture trade, is weighing “contingencies” that could include completing a Pacific Rim trade pact that excludes Canada, according to two sources familiar with the issue. One official familiar with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiation said […] Read more
Pitting supply management against U.S. subsidies seen as ‘unfair’
Reading Time: 2 minutes CNS Canada — How will Canada’s supply management system stack up against America’s domestic supports if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) comes to fruition? It’s a question that hasn’t been answered, say some experts from Canada’s farming institutions. “It would be completely unfair if we have to compete with lower prices, because those lower prices are […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
