Thank you for inviting the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance to present its views on the new agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico.

Our members have a very simple message: CAFTA calls for the swift ratification of CUSMA to ensure continued stability in the North American market, and strongly urges parliamentarians in both Houses to pass Bill C-100 quickly.

CAFTA represents the 90% of farmers who depend on trade, and producers, manufacturers and agri-food exporters who want to grow the economy through better access to international markets. This includes beef, pork, meat, grain cereals, pulses, soybeans, canola, as well as the malt sugar and processed food industries. Together our members account for more than 90% of Canada's agri-food exports, which in 2018 reached record levels of $59 billion and which support one million jobs across urban and rural communities in Canada.

A significant portion of these jobs and sales would not exist without competitive access to world markets. Despite the strong performance, opportunities for further growth are being threatened by unprecedented uncertainty and a rising protectionist sentiment in certain corners, as well as the erosion of predictability in both traditional and new markets.

Last week, CAFTA released its 2019 federal election priorities, entitled “Realizing Canada's Export Potential in an Unpredictable and Fiercely Competitive World”. It is a prescription for what is required to allow Canadian agri-food exports to continue setting records as trade is under threat and increasingly linked to geopolitical and global events.

First on the list of recommendations is to preserve and enhance accessing key export markets and with that, the call to ratify and bring CUSMA into force as quickly as possible.

CAFTA attended all negotiating rounds for the new CUSMA and applauded the news last fall that Canada concluded talks. CAFTA also welcomed the recent resolution of the tariff issue between the Government of Canada and the U.S. related to aluminum and steel products. Tariff-free trade has been an incredible success for businesses throughout North America and for agri-food exporters in particular.

Over the last 25 years, Canadian agricultural and food exports to the U.S. and Mexico have nearly quadrupled under NAFTA. Today, the U.S. and Mexico are our first and fourth-largest export markets, making up about 55% of our total exports last year.

CUSMA builds on the success of the NAFTA agreement. It preserves and secures the duty-free access upon which the North American agriculture and food sector has been built over the past quarter century. Our members, the hundreds of thousands of farmers, ranchers, food processors and agri-food exporters, who rely on trade for their livelihood, are pleased that the Canadian government is taking steps to ratify the new agreement and bring it into force.

Our members emphasize the following outcomes as key benefits of the new CUSMA.

The agreement contains no new tariffs or trade-restricting measures. All agricultural products that have zero tariffs under NAFTA will remain at zero tariffs under CUSMA. Maintaining predictable duty-free access to the North American market is a major win for our members. This will help to strengthen the supply chains that have been developed for the past generation in North America.

This new agreement also includes meaningful progress on regulatory alignment and co-operation. In particular, I would note the establishment of a committee on agriculture that will serve as a forum to address trade barriers, a working group for co-operation on agriculture biotechnology, and the creation of a new sanitary and phytosanitary committee that will help ensure regulations are transparent, based on science, and that trade in North America flows freely, fairly and abundantly.

Another key benefit for our members is the preservation of the dispute resolution provisions that are vital to ensuring fair and transparent processes are in place for when disagreements arise. Preserving chapter 19 in its entirety and much of chapter 20 from the previous NAFTA agreement are also major wins.

Market access improvements for Canadian agri-food exporters include increased quota for refined sugar and sugar-containing products as well as gains for some processed oilseeds products like margarine. These are all welcome news for our members.

All these advances will help to consolidate the gains of the original NAFTA and provide certainty in the North American market, which is essential to the success of our Canadian agri-food exporters.

In closing, CUSMA represents a meaningful upgrade to NAFTA for our members, by keeping our trade tariff-free, establishing processes that will help remove remaining technical barriers to trade and maintaining vital provisions to deal with disputes.

We look forward to working with the government to bring CUSMA into force so that our members can realize its benefits as quickly as possible.

Transcript

Discussions (0)