Canada-EU trade talks with Wallonia collapse as Freeland heads home | Hacker News Reader

Canada-EU trade talks with Wallonia collapse as Freeland heads home

cbc.ca

44 pointskukx48 comments

I'm not well-versed in these trade talks, but you know what really grinds my gears about Canada's current protectionism?

Butter.

No, really. In Canada, the dairy industry is run by a single co-op. That means that all milk and milk-based products must be sourced from the co-op (i.e. your provincial dairy bank).

So all butter in Canada comes from the provincial supply. Want locally-sourced butter? It's nearly impossible to obtain, and even if you can, it's extremely expensive due to tariffs. Want butter that's completely grass-fed? It's possible, but also extremely expensive, and it comes from the provincial bank, so it's possibly mixed with other cows and/or milk. And all butter is 80% milk fat, which is abysmally low. European dairy is 85%, sometimes 90+%.

Only very recently has it been possible to buy "New Zealand" grass-fed butter here, but it's $11 per 1/2 pound, likely due to import tariffs. And it goes through a local dairy, so I'm not 100% confident it's truly New Zealand milk. Nor can I confirm its fat percentage, so I could be just paying for a lot of water.

If you want to drive across the border to buy butter and bring it back, be prepared to answer a lot of questions to the CBSA, and possibly pay more tariffs, making it prohibitively expensive.

This applies to most other agricultural products too, like cheese, eggs, wheat, and more. Getting good cheese in Canada is expensive and hard.

The fact that the article mentions that the CETA made strides in agricultural issues tells me that what I cited above is a possible issue in these trade negotiations. The same was true for TPP.

I'll be really happy when these trade deals pass so I can get some real food at a decent price, and my local farmers can be given an opportunity to compete. Until then, the biggest opponents to these deals are farmers. That should make you question their motives.

> If you want to drive across the border to buy butter and bring it back, be prepared to answer a lot of questions to the CBSA, and possibly pay more tariffs, making it prohibitively expensive.

My father does a lot of cross-border shopping at an American Costco (BC -> Washington). Among other groceries, he always buys butter, cheese, milk, and often brings back various second-hand/electronic goods shipped to a US PO box.

Canadian border guards almost never ask him stupid questions - and I don't believe he's ever been interrogated about dairy products in particular.

It might help that he:

1. Has his role in typical and atypical border-control conversations memorized.

2. Looks like a cave man who hasn't shaved in a decade.

Canadians regularly go across the border to buy butter, cheese, and other dairy products; much of it depends on what border crossing they use, what province they are in, and how much they bring back. People from near Vancouver, BC regularly cross over to Blaine, WA to buy cheese and gasoline (both of which are much cheaper in WA than BC), and are rarely tariff-ed at the border; there is even a 'dairy' (milk product store) in Blaine (which is a small town).

Similar experience here. Cross the border in Ontario into NY. Shop at Watertown (or Syracuse). Bring back, amongst other things, butter and dairy products up to our limit (and never more). Our most expensive "item" is usually something else and that is what I am most often asked about. The border crossing has been pleasant on both sides.

Now the frequency of our trips may have a bearing - just twice a year - once in Mar/April and once before school starts.

>No, really. In Canada, the dairy industry is run by a single co-op. That means that all milk and milk-based products must be sourced from the co-op (i.e. your provincial dairy bank).

Number of large dairy processing companies in Quebec: 3 multinationals, Agropur, a cooperative, and Saputo, a private company, both originally from Quebec, and Parmalat, from Italy, process over 80% of the milk

Number of mid-sized dairy processing companies in Quebec: 35 mid-sized companies process 19% of the milk

http://lait.org/en/the-farm-in-action/the-production-scenari...

>Getting good cheese in Canada is expensive and hard.

Quebec’s share of cheese production in Canada: 51%

https://www.fromagesdici.com/repertoire

I've never run out of good cheeses here, maybe outside of Quebec it's harder to get your hands on good cheeses, but here it's everywhere.

I'll concede, we don't have the greatest butter, but as times goes on, they'll wise up, we didn't have real fresh creme before, now we do.

>and my local farmers can be given an opportunity to compete. Until then, the biggest opponents to these deals are farmers. That should make you question their motives.

Our farmers and local food producers deserve more recognition then we give them.

They usually come from long lines of farmers and they've lived the high and lows of market prices due to globalization, i don't think they want to go back to having to guess how much the price of their milk will be or if there's going to be a shortage or if they'll be able afford to feed their cows anymore. Co-op's aren't a perfect solution, but the free market is an impossible utopia.

Best cheese I've had in Canada was in Quebec. It's dismal here in Ontario.

Best cheese I've had anywhere was Switzerland. And it was similarly priced to what we pay here for Black Diamond cheese, which is mass-produced but serviceable.

Good quality local cheese does exist, but you're spending upwards of $20-$30/kg. That makes it something you only buy on really special occasions. Given that in Europe you can buy cheese that tastes better but is a tenth of the cost, I have to question the prices in Canada. All things are likely not equal between both countries, but the protectionism can't be helping to drive down costs and is likely doing the opposite.

Oh yeah, the good cheese is definitely not cheap. Luckily, i'm a cheddar fan and costco has a 3 and 5 year old brick for under $10.

Very interesting article about the subject that touches a lot of the facets of this market.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commen...

"Until last May, it was importing cheaper U.S. milk-protein concentrates as ingredients, displacing domestic milk. It temporarily halted the imports, however, after regulators in Canada created a new class of lower-priced industrial milk destined specifically for cheese and yogurt production. The solution is a stop-gap measure, however, that cannot be sustained without permanent subsidies or raising prices on other dairy products."

Then, in relation to MPC's, here's a snippet from Wikipedia

"In the US dairy farmers are protected from international competitors with a range of measures, including tariffs on imports. MPCs however are not subject to a tariff rate quota, so most MPCs used are imported[citation needed]. “The United States imports of MPCs have doubled in the last five years, and between 2007 and 2008 MPC imports increased 66 percent.”[11] The majority of these imports come from New Zealand, totaling $250 million worth of MPC imported worldwide.[11] US dairy producer groups claim that foreign manufacturers using nonfat dry milk in the production of MPC are circumventing existing quotas on nonfat dry milk.[12][13] Further concern arises as MPCs are largely unregulated.[11]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_protein_concentrate

There's good cheese in Eastern Ontario, although that's probably part of the Quebec tradition.

I think that protectionism is helping to produce quality cheese in Canada. Sure, good cheese costs $20/kg, but since crappy cheese often costs $15/kg, the delta doesn't seem too bad. If it was $5 vs $10, it'd seem a lot worse.

Dairy quotas are currently worth about $44,000 a cow. That's even crazier than taxi medallions being worth $250,000. With such strong evidence of a harmful monopoly you'd think Canadians would be rioting in the street, but it seems most Canadians support keeping dairy quotas.

> Good quality local cheese does exist, but you're spending upwards of $20-$30/kg. That makes it something you only buy on really special occasions. Given that in Europe you can buy cheese that tastes better but is a tenth of the cost, I have to question the prices in Canada.

You are quite deluded. Quality cheese in France costs around 18-25€/kg, say 20€/kg, that's $30/kg. Cheap one costs 8-12€/kg, that's still $12-$18/kg.

Quebec has the best cheese situation in Canada by far. (At least the parts I've been to. Can't speak for the west)

I'm pretty wary of American meat and cheese though. The animal welfare conditions south of the boarder are abysmal and the cheese facility inspections are not unannounced, they are booked days in advance, and I've heard some pretty awful stuff.

Don't like the current system either, but it does have a couple of advantages.

100% agree. I've said this to many friends: in Canada, the cheapest meats, vegetables, and dairy that you can buy is very good quality for the price. However, if you want to spend extra money on better quality food, you have to pay a lot more money, and it's not that much better.

In the US, you can get really cheap food, but it's very poor quality. I wouldn't want to serve it to my family. However, if you want to spend a little more money (close to what we pay in Canada for normal quality), you can get really good quality food that surpasses what we get in Canada for much more money.

I'm cognizant of the conditions we put our livestock in, and I try to source food from better sources, but it's a real hit on your pocketbook. To me, the US system is definitely far from perfect, but the free-market system seems to work more in my favour. I'm not sure how it works overall (i.e. is it sustainable for the farmers?), but I can usually only worry about myself.

Dairy-free Canadian here. Two things you could do: vote with your mouth and wallet. Or support a very intelligent Canadian lawyer who is seeking to do what you describe: https://marthahallfindlay.ca/viewpoints/supply-management/

Yeah, totally. There are some good Canadian cheeses but for the most part the local dairies seem focused on producing large quantities of cheddar. I'd love to be able to buy more European cheeses at a decent price.

Just an aside, I wish I could get Old or Extra Old cheddar as cheap in the US as I could in Canada.

The fact that in Canada cheese tends to be more expensive than beef, by weight, has always struck me as a strange artifact of some kind of political arrangement

I've spoken to an Ontario dairy farmer in the past about Palm Oil and it's production's effect on the environment. He let me know that they use it in the feed, so no avoiding it through him.

We live near the border, and I've never seen anyone questioned (myself included) when bringing dairy across; it's one of the primary purchases of people visiting the US side.

The Investment protection and investor-state-tribunals[1] are rather unwelcome and as bad as the ones in the TTIP.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Tra...

It's really unclear to me why TTIP and CETA have these. I can sort of see the logic for TPP, because many of the countries involved there don't have a reputation for having solid court systems. However, the US, Canada and the EU all have mature legal systems, so a corporation can already sue a country as is and get a fair trial.

It's definitely been opined that there's little benefit to having ISDS in TTIP/CETA. I suspect the main reason for keeping them in is symmetry--if you drop them TTIP and CETA, you'll see much stronger pressure to drop them from treaties where they make more sense (e.g., trade with, say, Pakistan), as people will argue that it wasn't necessary for TTIP so it shouldn't be necessary for other agreements.

A corporation cannot sue a government for getting into a specific business normally.

It's a tricky thing: company ABC invests $1B in some industry in some country - and then that country comes along and invests $2B in a national company so that national company can 'stay alive' ... and that money is used to undercut the foreign competitor.

A lot of trade happens in traditionally protected sectors - so it's a hairy thing when foreign entities come along.

Many countries - such as China - claim 'fair trade' (i.e. WTO) but specifically use all sorts of games to protect industries, just not obvious tactics like tariffs.

This issue is almost at the hart of 'free trade' because it's all about opening traditionally protected sectors - and local actors often won't like that and will lobby their governments to 'save them' in roundabout ways.

So it's a tricky thing.

If anything, this shows that the EU is basically inept when it comes to trade deals. They will get nowhere with anyone because there will always be some little state the size of a city that doesn't like something.

Imagine if all US states and major cities had to individually approve US trade deals!

> If anything, this shows that the EU is basically inept when it comes to trade deals. They will get nowhere with anyone because there will always be some little state the size of a city that doesn't like something.

It's not only that small part of Belgium which suddenly happens to be against this. There is huge opposition against CETA and TTIP in many European countries but most governments either are on the pro side or are pressured into accepting. Also what's tried here is putting CETA (at least partly) into effect to create facts before the national parliaments have their chance to decide, a very shady tactic.

There is not that much opposition to these trade deals - the opposition is usually from minority (i.e. political) or special interest group (i.e. an industry that would be disrupted, like agriculture).

Case and point - it's the Walloon farmers that scuttled this deal it seems - and agriculture is always the most challenging participant because of how strongly subsidized they are, and how we give them some strategic interests etc..

Most people are generally pro trade these days - even in Europe.

> There is not that much opposition to these trade deals - the opposition is usually from minority (i.e. political) or special interest group (i.e. an industry that would be disrupted, like agriculture).

Are you kidding? A large majority is opposing. Only government leaders and EU heads support this kind of deals.

Super interested, why the author has not included specific reason or requests coming from Wallonia on why they don't want the deal.

I'm pretty sure these requests are based on non-corporate-political principle and that's why can't be fulfilled.

EDIT : Only thing I found is

    specifically on the symbolic issue of arbitration, which is politically extremely important

Sounds pretty vague to me.

It grants corporations the rights to bypass national courts and directly file claims in some kind of international tribunal. But the way it's setup is really fishy to say the least.

Unfortunately in this case it also has some local political reason as the national government is a right wing government and is Pro CETA/TTIP. That is also the case with the regional Flemish right wing government. The regional Walloon government is left wing and is against. So it's a bit of an impasse.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or Ceta, was expected to boost bilateral trade, but Wallonia sees the accord as a threat to farmers and welfare standards. The region has a strong socialist tradition. Its fears echo those of anti-globalisation activists, who say Ceta and deals like it give too much power to multinationals - power even to intimidate governments.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37731955

That struck me as odd. I thought arbitration was the most important issue, not a symbolic one. Wasn't this trade deal (CETA) the back door for special-courts-for-American-multinationals?

Arbitration is a minor issue from a trade agreements point of view. The courts are not used that often, they usually side with states, and they're put in place mostly because neither country wants to give up its sovereignty to be at the mercy of the other country's courts. The natural solution is to make an a-national court to handle international disputes.

Politically, the issue has become very polarized, because even allowing an international court to settle disputes is seen as giving up sovereignty. Of course, I would love it if everyone settled in the court of my choosing, but it doesn't work that way. People also get concerned that these courts lack democratic accountability. But of course all courts lack democratic accountability...

I should add: here in the states, we worry that these courts are a backdoor for Canadian-conglomerate-friendly courts. They can't be simultaneously friendly to both the US and to Canada...

It's less about US vs. Canada (or country A vs. country B), and more about multinationals vs. citizens.

Of course, part of the problem is that citizens (and, more importantly, the representatives those citizens elect) aren't always in the right, either. Remember in the decolonialisation period how many countries nationalised formerly-productive industries, to the great loss of both overseas investors (immediately) and to their own citizens (over time, as the nationalised industries became less and less productive).

Granted, but the countries negotiating this treaty already have functional court systems to adjudicate who is wrong or right and to what degree. I strongly disagree with supplanting existing conflict resolution mechanisms that evolved over many years out of the choices of the local citizenry with an opaque, supranational entity whose rules of engagement were negotiated in secret, reflecting primarily the choices of large businesses.

The short comment in the news here was they're mostly against it to pester the Flemish, because they'd benefit more from this agreement than Wallonia.

Good, neither side of the Atlantic needs another ISTS agreement.

This is great, and I really mean it. We europeans managed somehow to stop not only TTIP but also CETA. Congrats!

Let's see what happens to the TPP in the US during the Congressional lame-duck period (Nov-Dec 2016).

That's great, you managed to keep yourself the lowest growth area in the world, while the rest of the world is gaining wealth by leaps and bounds.

Everyone else is opening up, Europe is hiding in the closet.

Wallonian farmers will pay a much harder price in the long run when the Flemish dump them.

Europe is already the most open market. The way proponents of such treaties try to sell them to us is that, thanks to them, European companies could go fuck other markets as easily as companies from other continents can already come and fuck our markets.

Europe is not an open market for agriculture - and the Walloons are defending their agriculture here.

Also, it's not as open a market as you would think.

If it was there would be massive banking, energy and telecoms consolidation, and there hasn't been.

If I understand it correctly, CETA would have resulted in too much power for (big) Canadian corporations. So it's a good thing the trade agreement hasn't been ratified, correct?

If you oppose CETA, you may like this, but the manner in which CETA is defeated is bad news for the EU. It basically makes it impossible for the EU to conclude trade deals if every (sub)national parliament has veto power (I think there are about 35 of them now). At the same time, the power to make free trade agreements cannot be returned to the member states because they're in a common market / customs union.

In US terms, this would be like giving a county in Wisconsin veto power over trade agreements made by the federal government.

Sweet!

Read Wallonia and thought this was about some SeaLand clone - I checked the URL expecting it to be the Onion

It's complex... Belgium is divided into two major regions: Flandern and Wallonia. Flandern speaks Dutch and Wallonia speaks French. Initially, Wallonia didn't want to share its riches with the poor Flemish, wich meant a strong separation between them, but now it's the other way around. Basically, Belgium is two countries pretending to be one. It's one of many ways in which Belgium is messed up politically.

Fun (sad) fact: Belgium has the most national politicians per capita in the world.

Fun (sad) fact 2: Belgium holds the record for longest period without a government, with Iraq in second place. 589 days. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%9311_Belgian_govern...)

But Belgium survived quite well without a government because the civil service kept on working. It seems that governments aren't as important as they like to think; at least on a day to day basis.

It's like not paying for software support and upgrades. The bugs won't be fixed, but newer ones won't be introduced either.

Flanders [1] not Flandern. But you're quite right about the rest. Belgium is indeed a mess. I moved there from the UK 6 years ago expecting to find a country benefitting from a more open minded dual-language socialist life style. But instead its just nothing more than petty in-fighting. The Flemish speak better English than they do French. The two countries would love to split up but they both want Brussels which is in the Flemish half but mostly French speaking.

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders

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