Canadian agriculture industry sets record straight on US-Cairns release

News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 16, 2003

(CANCUN, MEXICO) - Canada did not sign onto the US-Cairns Farm Leaders statement released Saturday at a news conference during the WTO negotiations.

The release, titled "USA and Cairns Group Farmers Call for a Big Result", lists all the USA farmer groups but fails to list the Cairns group members that actually signed onto the release leaving the false impression that all Cairns Group Farm Leaders were involved in the discussions and signed onto the statement. Only a handful of the 17 member countries were actually part of the discussions - Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and South Africa.

"Even if Canada had been part of these last-minute, late-night discussions, it would not have been able to sign onto the text," explains Canadian Federation President, Bob Friesen, representing Canadian farmers at the Cairns Group table. "The release says 'we endorsed the proposals made by the respective governments of the Cairns group in 2002' - proposals that our own Canadian Government could not support ."

The release also calls for substantial improvements to market access to be achieved by all countries in definite time frames - which Canada supports, but goes on to say "…including deep cuts to all tariff peaks and a significant expansion of tariff quotas" which is a much too simplistic and potentially ineffective way to increase market access and not part of the Canadian position.

The Cairns Group farm leaders met formally earlier this week providing a simple message for the Ministers attending this week's WTO meeting in Cancun: now is the time to deliver on the Doha mandate. Canada signed onto the formal statement.

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Founded in 1935 to provide Canada's farmers with a single voice in Ottawa, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture is the country's largest farmers' organization. Its members include provincial general farm organizations as well as national and inter-provincial commodity organizations from every province. Through its members, CFA represents over 200,000 Canadian farmers and farm families.

Contact:

Bob Friesen, CFA President, (204) 724-0824 (cell)
Kieran Green, COmmunications Coordinator, (613) 236-3633