According to the Globe and Mail’s article, Canada has recently joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks regarding agricultural trade between 10 other pacific countries. According to Mr. Fast, joining the TPP is good news for canadians because a pacific trade deal will create more jobs and promote national economic growth. While a deal may create more jobs and boost GDP, how will this trade deal affect our hard working farmers?
By making a Pacific trade deal, it may very well increase jobs and GDP in Canada, but will it expose our farmers to the uncontrolled world prices for their commodities? By making this deal, the supply, demand and price for many of these exports may be thrown out of equilibrium, and without a domestic price that the government can control, the farmer’s will be far more susceptible to the fluctuations of the world price for their product.
One of the major conditions of joining the TPP is that members are not allowed to protect their ‘sacred’ products such as quality cows, but must instead put all their products on the table for possible negotiation. This could be a problem for Canada because it makes it possible for foreign countries to use our products to become future competitors. Fortunately, the Harper government has announced that they are using large tariffs ranging from 150-300% to protect our more fragile farmers. This protection is important so that foreign competition cannot undermine our prices. It is important to buy domestic when possible after all.