December 14, 1998
The Canadian Pork Council and the Canadian Meat Council (CMC) have encouraged the Canadian Government to make strong representations to the Australian authorities, pointing out that a safeguard action, on the basis of the Productivity Commission's report, would not be sustainable under WTO- covered agreements.
"The imposition of any tariff at this time would exclude Canadian pork from the Australian market, when its access is already limited by other impoit requirements. Such a measure would not even help the Australian pork industry, as reports from Australia indicate" said Robert Weaver, the General Manager of the Canadian Meat Council. He indicated the Productivity Commission itself recognized in its report that "import restrictions will raise the price of inputs to the smallgoods manufacturing sector, with possible adverse effects on that industry, and increase consumer prices."
Both organizations agree that should the Government of Australia proceed to implement safeguard restrictions which target imports, they will make every effort to encourage the Canadian government to challenge these measures before the World Trade Organization. It would be much more acceptable, however, to avoid such measures in the first place", said Mr. Asnong, "as it would avoid serious disruption to agricultural trade between our two countries, not only in pork, but potentially in other agricultural commodities given Australia's very large agri-food trade surplus with Canada".
The Canadian Pork Council is the national federation of provincial hog producers and marketing organisations. The Canadian Meat Council is Canada's national trade association of federally inspected meat packers processors and trade.
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