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Farm-Scape, Episode 2172

A coalition of Canadian agricultural commodity groups and private companies is applauding the federal government's aggressive approach to negotiations for bilateral trade agreements.

In March a coalition representing nine groups sent a letter to federal trade minister David Emerson warning Canada's competitiveness in key markets is being eroded by aggressive moves by competing nations, particularly the United States, in signing bilateral trade deals.

In a speech delivered last week Emerson indicated Canada has rested on its resource laurels falling behind in the race to sign trade deals and announced the federal government plans to accelerate efforts to clinch new trade agreements.

Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen says, while World Trade Organization negotiations remain key, it is also important to negotiate individual agreements.

" Anywhere around the world where we have market access interests we need to spend a little more time and resources on bilateral trade negotiations and not for the reason that we don't support the WTO negotiations.

We still think that's the primary forum where we should be negotiating fair and equitable trade rules but, at the same time, we also recognize that other countries are fairly aggressively pursuing bilateral trade agreements and that there's a big risk, and in fact in some cases it's already happened, that Canada would lose preferential market access with countries that were doing these bilaterals with other countries and so we said it's extremely important that we don't allow that to happen.

To maintain our agriculture industry, to grow our agricultural industry we need to make sure we have good market access for our export commodities.

Friesen notes the coalition has identified a priority list of five key countries and regions that require special attention including China, Japan, the Andean Community, India and Morocco.

Staff Farmscape.Ca