Thank you for inviting me here today.

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The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance (CAFTA) is a coalition of national organizations advocating for a freer and fairer international trade environment for the agriculture and agri-food sector.

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CAFTA represents the 90% of farmers, ranchers, producers, processors, and exporters who depend on trade. CAFTA's members include farmers, ranchers, processors, producers, and exporters from major trade sectors such as beef, pork, grains, oilseeds, sugar, pulses, soy, processed food, and life science industries.

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Committee members are aware that the international trade policy environment is changing rapidly. In this context, CAFTA promotes putting agri-food trade at the heart of Canada’s international agenda. Canadian agriculture is vital to Canada’s economic growth and global influence. However, it remains underleveraged in Canadian international diplomacy and trade policy.

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The WTO’s recent Ministerial Conference showed that the negotiation and dispute-settlement functions of the organization are largely inoperative. The WTO remains essential to manage the nuts and bolts of global trade, but it is hard to see it breaking its current logjam without building on regional trade agreements such as the CPTPP.

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CAFTA welcomes efforts to leverage the CPTPPP, which is truly the gold standard for trade agreements because it goes far beyond traditional tariff reduction, establishing high-standard, comprehensive rules for 21st-century commerce.

We are broadly supportive of the incipient dialgoue between the CPTPP and the EU, given the importance of both trading blocks. We lack details at this stage but believe Canada can use this dialogue to address longstanding concerns, in the context of greater potential cooperation.

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Bringing my remarks back to UK accession, CAFTA has expressed concern that the government agreed to UK accession to the CPTPP without addressing non-tariff barriers that limit Canada’s market access for important Canadian agri-food exports to the UK such as beef and pork. I know the Canadian Pork Council will be addressing you in a few minutes and the Canadian Cattle Association is making a written submission, so you can address specific questions on these barriers to them.

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The broad point I wish to make here is that the government needs to ensure in this period of working more closely with other middle powers that the legitimate interests of agri-food exporters are taken into consideration. The UK has not recognized the science-based decision-making process of Canadian regulators, and this is also the case with the EU.

 

We need to find ways to solve these issues if we are to align with these countries in the international trade arena.

I look forward to responding to your questions.