The Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) was very pleased to see that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been approved by the European Union's parliament on Wednesday.
Implementation legislation in Canada is also expected to receive Parliamentary approval in short order.
Trade between the two sides amounts to more than $63 billion a year, and the CETA deal is expected to boost this by 20 per cent by removing almost all tariffs. Immediately upon implementation this agreement should help to improve real and profitable market access for Canadian agriculture and agricultural food exporters throughout the EU's, which represents a market of more than 500 million consumers.
Moving forward, CFA stresses that to allow the sector to fully take advantage of the deal, the Canadian government needs to ensure that transportation, regulatory, labour and other constraints in agriculture are addressed and the introduction of any non-tariff barriers is avoided.
The CFA will continue to emphasize that dairy producers should be compensated to fully mitigate the EU's new access that allows it to sell 17,000 tonnes of cheese into the Canadian market.
CFA calls for the government to continue its balanced trade approach that strengthens and supports all of the commodities that make up Canada's diverse agricultural sector.
Source : Canadian Federation of Agriculture