Indo-Pacific countries show interest in Canada’s food expertise, agriculture minister says

Canada can capitalize on the U.S.’s tarnished trade reputation to expand its food exports and expertise into the Indo-Pacific, federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald said upon returning from his first trade mission.

He toured Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines earlier this month in a bid to help diversify trade.

“We have something to offer and the world is open to it,” said Mr. MacDonald, who was named Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new cabinet in May,

The Indo-Pacific region currently imports a quarter of Canada’s total agricultural exports, but more access is needed as Canadian farmers fight trade wars with their two largest markets: the U.S. and China.

While dealing devastating blows to steel, aluminum and auto manufacturing, U.S. tariffs have largely bypassed the food industry. However, the ramifications have not.

Ottawa’s July decision to impose tariffs on Chinese steel − aimed at shoring up the domestic industry as it faces U.S. tariffs − was swiftly followed by Beijing imposing preliminary 75.8-per-cent duties on Canadian canola seed Tuesday.

Ottawa wants certainty from China before making concessions on canola tariffs, minister says

Canola is Canada’s most lucrative crop and China is its top market for seed. The move could cost the industry hundreds of billions of dollars as prices fall, and could shatter the sector’s dominant market share in one of the largest global importers of seed oils.

But U.S. President Donald Trump’s disregard for rules-based trade has some upsides, Mr. MacDonald said. The U.S. is no longer considered trustworthy, and other countries are also seeking to diversify. Canada matches the U.S. in food safety and food expertise, and it plays by the rules, he said.

“At every speech I made over there, my last sentence was basically you can trust Canada as a trading partner. It seemed to resonate.”

Canada is the number one country for food safety globally, he said. (This is backed up by The Economist’s latest report on Global Food Security). That is of particular interest in Asian countries, the minister said.

Canadian bioscience research also develops a number of crop varieties that meet the specific needs of farmers in the developing world, he said. This innovation opens the door for exports. For example, Mr. MacDonald visited farms in the Philippines that are growing potatoes using seeds and techniques developed in PEI, the minister’s home province.

Canada and the Philippines started working on a bilateral free-trade agreement in December. Mr. MacDonald is pushing to expedite it.

However, meeting global demand for Canadian product will demand that federal and provincial governments rethink regulations and trade infrastructure.

Regulation should “take an economic lens,” he said, adding that approval for agricultural inputs, such as pesticides and fertilizer, take too long. They put Canada at a competitive disadvantage, he said. Approval time frames can be cut from a couple of years to a couple of months, Mr. MacDonald said, by greenlighting products already approved in countries that have food-safety standards that Canada trusts.

As Canada’s trade begins to transition from north-south to sea bound, the federal government also needs to tackle nation-building infrastructure projects that will get products to market faster, Mr. MacDonald said.

Examples could include expanding the Port of Churchill. This arctic port is closer to the Prairies than West Coast ports so could provide quicker access to markets in Europe.

Interswitching, which allows railroad companies to use the track of their competitors under certain conditions, is also a policy under consideration, he said.

A pilot program opened in 2023 to temporarily extend interswitching distances. It was set to expire in March. The Liberal Party platform promised to extend the pilot by three years.

“We need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can right now to become less reliant on trading partners we maybe can’t trust … and we need to act very quickly.”