Peter Gallagher

It would be mad­ness for Aus­tralia to agree to admit Canada to the TPP “free trade” nego­ti­a­tions on the basis that they might keep their astro­nom­i­cally high bar­ri­ers to some food imports.

The Cana­dian Trade Min­is­ter, Ed Fast, told reporters this week that he believes Canada has “pub­lic sup­port” from six of the nine coun­tries nego­ti­at­ing the Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship to admit Canada to the group despite it’s inten­tion to retain sup­ply man­age­ment pro­tec­tion for Cana­dian farm prices (mainly in dairy, horticulture).

The “pub­lic” Aus­tralian posi­tion is of sup­port for Canada’s “inter­est” in join­ing the TPP but no deci­sion on whether, or on what terms, Canada should have a seat at the table.

Canada is a sub­stan­tial trad­ing econ­omy — one-and-a-half times the size of the Aus­tralian econ­omy — and a strong com­peti­tor in trans-Pacific mar­kets. Its mem­ber­ship of the TPP could give a big boost to the cred­i­bil­ity of this “new fron­tier” agree­ment adding to its trade cov­er­age and per­haps attract­ing other regional coun­tries to par­tic­i­pate despite the ambi­tious thresh­old com­mit­ment to barrier-free trade. Canada’s par­tic­i­pa­tion also has a strong com­mer­cial logic, given the close inte­gra­tion of the USA and Cana­dian markets.

But, thanks to the entrench­ment of old-fashioned, market-rigging, sup­ply con­trols (mar­ket­ing quo­tas) for a small num­ber of farm prod­ucts from the East­ern provinces, the Cana­dian trade land­scape is marred by some of the high­est peaks of import pro­tec­tion to be found in any devel­oped or devel­op­ing coun­try. Their claims for mem­ber­ship in an agree­ment intended to estab­lish free-trade across the Pacific while hold­ing these “sacred cows” in reserve is absurd.

Worse, it would sig­nal to Japan — also an aspi­rant for TPP mem­ber­ship — that they need not be too con­cerned about remov­ing their farm pro­tec­tion when nego­ti­at­ing to join the TPP.

We have yet to see whether the “free trade” deal to be struck among TPP par­tic­i­pants will over­turn some other his­tor­i­cal pro­tec­tion­ist anom­alies such as the bar­ri­ers to US sugar imports. But that uncer­tainty would only be com­pounded by giv­ing Canada a seat at the table on the basis Mr Fast proposes.

There is, how­ever, a dan­ger that pro­tec­tion­ist ele­ments in the US Con­gress would wel­come Cana­dian entry with high dairy pro­tec­tion as a stalk­ing horse (or is that a “tro­jan horse”) for US farm pro­tec­tion. If the USA decided it wanted to admit Canada to the nego­ti­a­tions even with supply-management, Aus­tralia and New Zealand would find it dif­fi­cult to resist the pressure.