Farmscape for June 27, 2018

The Canadian Meat Council is calling on the Federal Government to move forward with ratification of the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership as quickly as possible when Parliament reconvenes in September.
Legislation to implement the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership was tabled in the House of Commons earlier this month, just before Parliament adjourned for its summer recess.
Chris White, the President and CEO of the Canadian Meat Council, says the CPTPP offers a tremendous opportunity to expand and diversity markets and the quicker Canadian processors are able to access those markets the greater the opportunity will be to gain a foothold.

Clip-Chris White-Canadian Meat Council:
It opens up some potential new markets in a way that historically Canada has not exported to and, because we are a signatory to a deal, it gives us very favorable terms.
Secondly it allows us, and one of the reasons why the red meat sector has been pushing to have the government introduce the legislation and have it ratified is you want to be one of the earlier signatories to the deal to take full advantage of those opportunities before other countries ratify it and they get into those countries and begin to take the market share.
One the market share has been taken up it will be a challenge for Canada to source that market.
The expectation is that if you ratify the deal then you are in a position to start exporting before I am.
As a consequence, once that market share is taken up by you, once I sign a deal if that market share is gone the country that I want to export to that you're already in, they're not necessarily going to be that inclined to open up market share for me in a way that if I was one of the first countries to be exporting to them under the CPTPP I would then be able to secure a foothold.
From our perspective the timing is critical and we've been pushing Minister MacAulay at Ag and Minister Champagne in Trade and the Prime Ministers Office to do everything they could to be one of the earlier signatories to the deal.

White says we need the government to ratify the legislation and let Canadian industries take full advantage.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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