September 21 marked the five-year anniversary of the provisional application of the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). It is no surprise to the National Farmers Union (NFU) that farmers are not happy with the results.
Negotiations on the agricultural chapter were strained to the point that it was one of the last areas to be agreed upon. In the media, the issues were presented as a trade-off between allowing the EU more access to our supply-managed dairy market in return for gaining more access to the EU’s market for Canadian beef. Some political commentators looked for cheap points by framing this purported stalemate as a conflict between western ranchers and dairy producers in Ontario and Quebec. The NFU had a more sophisticated analysis, which time has proven to be accurate.
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