Farmscape for February 27, 2019

The Vice President Policy and Public Affairs with NATIONAL Public Relations says a rise of protectionism has created growing uncertainty as to Canada's trading relationships and the rules that govern those relationships.
USMCA, CPTPP and the like: Deciphering the Alphabet Soup of Trade Agreements will be among the topics discussed as part of the 2019 London Swine Conference March 26th and 27th.
Jean-Michel Laurin, the Vice President, Policy and Public Affairs with NATIONAL Public Relations, says for the pork sector which exports two thirds of its production, trade is the industry's lifeblood and continued access to foreign markets is critical to the success of the entire supply chain.

Clip-Jean-Michel Laurin-NATIONAL Public Relations:
For a number of years the situation was that countries like Canada that are trade dependant and saw the potential for growing business in other markets around the world tried to negotiate agreements with either blocks of countries or individual countries.
Trade has become a top of  mind issue because some of those countries and the United States is probably the most prominent, have started to question the validity of some of those agreements.
We saw President Trump blaming NAFTA for some of his countries problems and so I think we're in a situation now where there's growing uncertainty and when ever there's uncertainty people in business tend to get scared so that's why we've been talking about this more and more in recent years.
I think it's also a top of mind issue in Canada specifically because we need access to foreign markets to continue to prosper as a nation and our government has been successful at developing and negotiating trade agreements with several of our largest trading partners.
I think that is good news there is great opportunity for Canada there but at the same time there's still quite a bit of uncertainty because some of our trading partners are questioning the rules that govern our trading relationships.

Laurin notes Canada is the seventh largest pork producing nation in the world and if we want to be successful as a pork producing nation we need to be able to access foreign markets in an effective manner.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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