It said United States President Donald Trump’s threat of 25 per cent tariffs “means we can no longer consider trade agreements reliable.
“No matter what happens, Canadian farmers, workers, and consumers will be well served by initiatives that strengthen our food sovereignty and reduce our vulnerability to supply chain disruption, income loss, price increases and food shortages."
It said supply management needs to be defended, but there are recent comments from senior Trump administration officials that dairy and poultry trader barriers to protect supply management need to come down.
The NFU said Canadians need to diversify export markets, yet the government has signed a number of new trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnersbip, with the European Union and half a dozen relatively small-market countries.
It wants the federal and provincial governments to commit to rebuilding local and regional food production, processing, storage and distribution infrastructure “so that Canada has reliable, long-term capacity to feed our population.”
It repeated earlier calls for “full labour rights, open work permits and a pathway to citizenship” for temporary foreign workers.
It said something new in saying “there is a great opportunity to re-tool and expand our capacity to produce equipment designed for Canadian farms of all sizes and production types.”
And it repeated long-standing complaints about “corporate profiteering”
“Our anti-trust/competition framework has proven inadequate as seen by the approval of Bunge’s take-over of Viterra.
“If Canada is unable or unwilling to break up monopolistic companies, other methods of regulating and limiting their market power must be put in place or they will be in charge of our food supply.”
