You’ve likely read this in this space before, but it sure bears repeating right now: “a commodity trading province like ours is often at the mercy of world politics.”
It’s easy to get caught up in local, provincial or even national politics, thinking that it’s the only thing that’s important.
But China’s sanction against western Canadian canola now serves as a prime example of how we need to understand how the world stage can directly and severely impact us right down on the farm in Saskatchewan.
But we need to learn something else if we are to effectively handle this event: we need to understand political differences have to be put aside in order to develop the most reasoned and effective strategy to deal with issues.
More local bickering isn’t helpful.
After restricting the purchase of canola from Canada’s largest grain company, Richardson International, China moved last week to ban Canadian exports from all Canadian exporters, according to the Canadian Canola Council of Canada.
China cited the presence of “hazardous pests” in its decision to stop purchasing from Richardson. No tests confirmed the presence of any pests, fuelling long-held suspicions that this is about something very different.
“We have been seeing this develop over a period of time as opposed to the decision that was made earlier in China to impose a restriction on one company,” Jim Everson, the Canadian Council’s president, told the Western Producer.
Many believe that this is directly related to the detention of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou who was detained in Vancouver in January at the request of the United States.
Currently, China buys 40 per cent of Canada’s canola seed and oil and meal exports, a massive $3.6 billion in 2018 for the Western Canadian economy.
However, an important question remains: “Just what it is the best way to address it?”
Unhelpful would be to localize this international political fight by attributing it all to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the other failings of his federal Liberal government.
So far, that’s exactly what the Saskatchewan Party has avoided doing.
“There’s going to be a point where the Prime Minister is going to be needed to be directly engaged,” Jeremy Harrison, minister of trade and export development, told reporters last week.
“Right now, we’re going to be working with the national government to try and find a resolution because this is such an important economic issue for our province.”
For a dyed-in-the-wool partisan like Harrison, a bipartisan, multi-government-level co-operative approach isn’t easy.
Nor is working closely with the federal Trudeau government appealing to a lot of western Canadian farmers. It may seem easier to fall into line with federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and just add the China canola crisis to Trudeau’s ever-growing list of failings.
But even if the canola mess could be strictly blamed on Trudeau, which, in this case, it really can’t, this would be an unproductive approach.
Because of this, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe also recognized the need to sheath his sword last week and have what seemed to be a productive strategic telephone conversation with the Prime Minister on the matter.
“I have every reason to believe he is taking this seriously,” Moe said of Trudeau.
Like Harrison and Everson, Moe agreed the emphasis right now has to be on high-level nation-to-nation talks and demonstrated research science to debunk Chinese allegations about Canadian canola safety.
As Harrison put it: “We’re going to be supportive of efforts they make, but we think that they do need to be engaged at the diplomatic and political level on this, and continuing to engage at the scientific level as well,” he said.
Really, it’s what we should do if we are serious about resolving this mess.
