The General Manager of Manitoba Pork suggests the renewal of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement needs to be the number one priority of governments in Canada from coast to coast.
The first mandatory joint review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement officially starts July 1st.
Cam Dahl, the General Manager of Manitoba Pork, suggests, while it is important to focus on having more value-added processing here at home and diversifying our export markets, we can forget about our closest and largest export market.
The U.S. is our largest market for Canada in almost everything. We do need to look at diversification; we do need to look at other markets but that proximity of our North American partner isn’t going to charge and so it’s absolutely critical that the renewal of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement be the number one priority of governments from coast to coast.
If we can come out of the review and the renegotiation with most of that agreement still intact and continue to move agriculture and food products across North American in an integrated way, that will help insulate us from that instability.
The flip side of this is, if we come out of this with the United States withdrawing from the agreement or with tariffs on agriculture and food products that is going to have a significant economy on farmers from coast to coast.
~ Cam Dahl, Manitoba Pork
Dahl notes all one has to do is look at the price of gas today and then think about how food gets to the grocery store to recognize the impact that the increase in the cost of energy is going to have on the cost of farm inputs, the cost of running processing plants and the cost of food.
