DISSENTING OPINION BY THE LIBERAL PARTY

While the Liberal Party agrees in principle with many elements of this report, we cannot fully endorse this report.  There are still a number of concerns that have either not been fully addressed, or have not been included at all.

Canadian businesses, farmers and workers are among the world's most competitive.  We all stand to benefit from better access to global markets, especially in emerging economies like China, India and Brazil. Open markets must be supported by improved trade rules and new measures to cut red tape at the border.

When negotiating either bilateral or multilateral trade deals, Canada’s must maintain the position that the best deal possible must be reached for Canada.  For example, the concerns of manufacturing or other sensitive sectors must be taken into account in all negotiations.

With regards to the WTO negotiations, it is imperative that Canada maintain its balanced approach to the negotiations.  It is the Liberal Party’s view that we need ambitious outcomes across the board: a level playing field for agriculture, better market access for agriculture, industrial goods and services, improved trade rules, and deeper integration of developing countries into the global economy.

Canada should be seeking the elimination of agriculture export subsidies as quickly as possible, substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support, and substantial improvement in market access for agriculture and food products.  But, best results can only be achieved if countries have the flexibility to accommodate their domestic sensitivities.  For Canada, this means ensuring that our producers continue to have the ability to choose how to market their products, including through orderly marketing structures such as supply management.

The Liberal Party has concerns with regards to supply management based on Minister Emerson’s own statement with regards to trade issues concerning the manufacturing sectors and supply management:

“I’ll probably get hell for this but I can envisage a time where we are just going to have to say to some resistant sectors that there is a national interest and we should work with sectors to see if they can, with some modest support from government, transition to globally competitive stature or we’re going to just have to go through the painful adjustments.”

(Western Producer, December 21, 2006)

In addition, when speaking about supply management and Canada’s position on the WTO negotiations, Conservative Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl said:

"It is inconceivable that we would walk away from the WTO so take that as your first gospel truth. Then the question is, how do we move ahead to look after your interests?"

(Western Producer, March 15, 2007).

Both of these statements lead us to believe that the Conservative government is willing to sacrifice supply management at the WTO negotiations.

The Liberal Party also has reservations about the Conservative government’s decision to close Canadian consulates in Milan, Italy, St. Petersburg, Russia, and Fukuoka and Osaka, Japan, because of the significant economic and political impact on our relations with these countries.

In Milan the consulate trade office helped attract millions of dollars of investment by successfully promoting Canada as an entry point to the NAFTA market for Italian entrepreneurs.  Milan is the business capital and epicentre of Italy.

Japan is currently Canada's second largest trading partner, after the United States.  The Liberal Party looks at Japan as a strategic partner in terms of doing business with the rest of East Asia.

Russia is a country with 11 time zones, and the most diverse and unique geography in the world.  It is non-sensical to base operations solely out of Moscow when it is the North-west region of Russia that is experiencing the growth.  It also does not make sense to have one office to service one of the largest countries in the world.

The Liberal Party also concerns about he overall trade strategy program.  The Conservative government cut the proposed Can-Trade program that was designed to increase trade.

CAN-Trade was designed on 4 key pillars:

The Liberal party was not able to create CAN Trade as it was announced in the 2005 Fiscal update.  Much of the ideas and plans were not used by the new government and in some cases the government seems to be moving in the opposite direction. 

The government announced only $60 million investment in the international trade department in the 2007 budget.  This is far short of the $485 million program introduced by our previous government.