Exporters ‘confident’ senators will scrap BQ’s supply management bill

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OTTAWA – The Bloc Québécois fears being muzzled by senators after being accused of wanting to take Canadian trade negotiators hostage with their bill aimed at protecting supply management from future trade agreements.

By voting against a BQ motion to improve benefits for seniors this week, the Trudeau government appears to be turning its back on any partnership with the separatists. Meanwhile, the Bloc’s other condition for keeping the Liberals in power could well be doomed to failure in the Senate.

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Bill C-282, which would protect supply management from future trade deals, is before a Senate committee and an exporters association says it is “confident” the bill will be defeated.

In an interview with the National Post, Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance (CAFTA) executive director Michael Harvey said he believes members of the Senate Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee will see “the problems of it and will reject it”.

“What it does is hold Canada’s trade negotiators hostage, legislatively, in a way that prevents them from negotiating openly in future free trade agreements,” said Harvey.

The alliance’s members rely on trade deals to get their products to markets in other countries, and they believe weakening the federal government’s position in trade agreements would reduce the benefits of that trade.

Yves Perron, the Bloc’s critic for agriculture, agri-food and supply management, admitted in an interview that he was “very afraid” that a few senators could derail his bill.

“We have two or three senators here, who are former negotiators, who are taking this personally and who have spoken out,” lamented Perron. “They didn’t even hesitate in their speech to commit to killing this bill. Is that acceptable in a democracy of 40 million people where 80 per cent of elected officials voted for it?” he added.

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The Bloc Québécois’ Bill C-282 is very clear. It would amend the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act to further protect supply management from future trade negotiations. The bill, first introduced five years ago, was ultimately passed by about 80 per cent of MPs in the House of Commons.

Last week, members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, including its chair Sen. Peter Boehm, were very reluctant to support this bill. A federal government official confirmed that the C-282 was consistent with the policy put forward by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau which aims to exclude supply management from trade agreements.

“The prime minister has been clear, the deputy prime minister has been clear, I have been clear that supply management will be protected and it won’t be a part of future trade negotiations,” said International Trade Minister Mary Ng earlier this week.

However, this policy is not enshrined in law. The Bloc Québécois wants to protect dairy, poultry and egg producers by amending the law to give negotiators clear and stable mandates.

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But in his testimony before the Senate committee, Doug Forsyth, director general of market access and trade controls at Global Affairs Canada, said passing the bill would narrow the range of concessions that could be made to reach an agreement in future deals.

He said it would be “reasonable to expect” future negotiating partners to adjust their own approach to negotiations with Canada “which could limit our opportunity to maximize the overall commercial benefits and overall commercials significances of new trade agreements.”

In the business community and across the federal government, renegotiating the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) in 2026 is said to be “top of mind” these days.

“All of our trading partners are watching us. They’re watching what this bill looks like,” Forsyth said.

He said taking “things off the table up front” could push other negotiating partners to do the same and that’s “one of the biggest impacts that the government could probably see.”

“It could impact other sectors where we’d like to see more exports,” Forsyth said.

National Post
atrepanier@postmedia.com

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