Attempt to Stop Global Affairs Canada from Selling Out Small and Medium-Sized Farmers
Rally on Parliament Hill,
September 10, 2024, in support of Bill C-282
Luc Thériault, Bloc Québécois Member of the House of Commons, introduced the private member's Bill C-282 in June 2022. The bill aims to amend "the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act (specifically supply management) so that the Minister of Foreign Affairs cannot make certain commitments with respect to international trade regarding certain goods" namely dairy, poultry and eggs.
Bill C-282 passed the House of Commons unanimously on February 8, 2023, and is now under consideration in the Canadian Senate Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee. It is being subjected to intense U.S. pressure to defeat it.
The bill seeks to ban any additional supply management concessions in trade negotiations. Dairy farmers and their communities worry that the U.S. will push for the weakening, if not the total elimination of supply management in the upcoming renegotiation of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement (CUSMA).
Certain Senate members, the mass media and U.S. officials and non-governmental organizations are demanding the Senate reject Bill C-282 altogether and allow the U.S. takeover of Canada and Quebec's dairy, poultry, and egg sector upon the amendment of CUSMA. They have launched an attack centred on the claim that if Bill C-282 is passed, it will provoke the U.S. government to pull out of CUSMA altogether. According to them, this would throw the Canadian economy into turmoil. This is the U.S. standard practice of hooliganism in international affairs.
Monopoly-controlled media have launched hysterical attacks against the bill. They quote so-called trade watchers and former trade officials as saying Bill C-282 "invites retaliation, with Canada bracing for a U.S. response." They warn that "by threatening to add a new gripe to the list of Canada-U.S. trade disagreements, the adoption of a bill to ban supply management concessions could fuel a fraught review of the North American trade pact in 2026."
They report, "Critics of the bill have raised concern over the damage that could be done during the 2026 review of the [CUSMA] if supply management is pre-emptively removed from the negotiation list."
No concern whatever is expressed for the needs of Canadian farmers and workers more generally, and their striving for a self-reliant economy independent of the U.S. and its war machine.
U.S. officials have been blunt in imposing U.S. dictate. For example, Sharon Bomer Lauritsen, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for agricultural affairs from 2011 to 2020 says: "For any kind of negotiations, if you're taking a particularly important issue off the table before you even begin, that already sets up a very difficult situation to find a way forward."
These remarks are presented without discussion on the significance of Canada and Quebec's supply management system. The dictate does raise the possibility of opting out of the North America free trade agreement, which favours the U.S. private war interests, and instead opening a path to a new direction for the economy of self-reliance and independence. Such a direction provides a means to undermine the U.S. war economy, and contribute to solving the country's many problems, including making Canada a Zone for Peace.
In the view and analysis of many Canadians, CUSMA has intensified the U.S. takeover of the Canadian economy. They say CUSMA is directing the Canadian economy to serve the narrow private interests of U.S.-led global oligarchs and their war economy, and accelerating an anti-social descent with the draining of valuable social programs to pay the rich.
Many Canadians say CUSMA has taken the economies of all three countries further down the road of blocking and even negating a modern direction and aim for these economies to serve the people and their development as independent and self-reliant. The peoples of all three countries want trade with other nations to be for mutual benefit and development and not for war and exploitation which enrich powerful oligarchic interests.
Supply management has been a significant example of what can be done if the people resist imperialism, defend their rights and claims, and pursue a pro-social direction for the economy.
(Photo: M. Caron)
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 11 - November 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M540116.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca