Canadians are widely known for being too nice. We will apologize for incidents that are not our fault, and generously help others without a second thought.
Canadians are widely known for being too nice. We will apologize for incidents that are not our fault, and generously help others without a second thought. In most cases, this is an excellent quality and one that makes me proud to call myself a Canadian. However, there are certain instances where it becomes our weakness.
The Canadian meat industry's fight with American legislators over Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) rules is a perfect example of this.
For the past seven years the Canadian meat industry has been fighting with the United States government in an attempt to eliminate the COOL rules.
These mandatory rules require that meat derived from animals born, reared or slaughtered outside the U.S. be labeled to indicate the country or countries of origin.
Introduced in 2008 and amended in 2013, the COOL rules are attributed to costing the Canadian meat industry over one-billon dollars annually.
Canadian Agricultural officials have spent the better part of the last few years travelling around the U.S. lobbying different American groups involved in the meat industry. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has been to Washington twice in the past several months, but to no avail.
Even after three separate rulings from the World Trade Organization (WTO) stating that the rules "discriminate" against Canadian livestock, American officials still refuse to implement any legislation that will eliminate these COOL rules.
The first two WTO rulings came in 2011, and 2012. After those two reports the U.S. amended their rules, but those changes didn't satisfy anyone.
The latest WTO report, released on Oct. 20 of 2014, stated that the "the amended COOL measure increases the original COOL measure's detrimental impact on the competitive opportunities of imported livestock in the US marker, because it necessitates increase segregation of meat and livestock according to origin."
Now while I have only been following this fight for the past year, I have talked to Minister Ritz, and Alberta Agriculture Minster Verlyn Olson. Both have said, on several occasions, that if it came down to it Canada would be willing to implement heavy tariffs on U.S. products if the U.S. failed to cooperate.
Well, it appears the Americans are stubborn. They aren't budging on these COOL rules even after the WTO continues to side with Canada. The time for being nice is over. It is about time the Canadian government started implementing these threats and really get the U.S. government's attention.
Part of me thinks the Americans are taking advantage of the Canadians by believing they will never act on these threats of introducing tariffs. It's time to prove them wrong and show them we are serious.
If the COOL rules are having as big of an impact as what's being portrayed and are costing the Canadian meat industry over one-billion dollars annually, why wait any longer? Canada needs to stop being nice and maybe then the Americans will listen.
