Ottawa-The headaches in international trade may soon grow to include carbon tariffs that require exporters like Canada to provide all sorts of data on how their commodities were grown, says Keith Currie, President of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.

Carbon border adjustments are going to become a real thing very shortly, Currie told the Commons agriculture committee. Discussions about them are happening all the time around trade deals and major ministerial conferences.

Liberal MP Heath MacDonald said there is a growing push in the U.S. Congress for measuring greenhouse gas emissions from certain products produced in the U.S. “They hope the data will underpin the creation of a tariff on imports of carbon-intensive goods from other countries.”

The European Union has already gone in that direction and is considering carbon tariffs on food exporting countries without a recognized carbon-pricing mechanism, he said.

“If we don't provide a carbon-pricing mechanism and our trading partners start enacting tariffs, what are we presently preparing for with regard to some of these issues that could happen relatively quickly. In some cases, they are happening now.”

Currie said Canadian farmers are dealing at a competitive disadvantage due to financial support programs U.S. farmers have because “the reality is that their government is looking after their farmers in a financial way much better than our own government is.

“I think that's where we struggle in the competitiveness of producing our products. We can grow products with the best of them on a level playing field, but when we have differences of opinion or policy across borders that affect how we are going to have to farm, or if we can farm, that's where we struggle.”

MacDonald asked what the agri-food sector was doing “as an industry to prepare for the likes of situations where tariffs are going to be imposed on some of our products.” Doing away with carbon pricing to reduce emissions is not the way the world is going.

Scott Ross, CFA Executive Director, said his organization is “working internationally with our counterparts on the need to ensure there is appropriate discipline at the WTO to ensure that all of those measures are implemented in a science-based fashion and that we have consistent grounds on which they're being developed.

“I think from our perspective that is absolutely paramount. If we're going to see mechanisms like that employed, there have to be international legal frameworks that hold those accountable to the science and ensure they're being built around a real strong basis of science and evidence.”

Kody Blois, ag committee chair, said farmers in many countries are protesting about the regulatory burden being imposed on them. The emergence of carbon border adjustments has to be dealt with. “If we don't start accounting for that, we could actually be on a strong footing.”

This news item was prepared for National Newswatch