Liberalization’s Last Frontier: Canada’s Food Trade

The report shows how Canada stands to benefit from lower trade barriers to food and increased food trade. Trading food allows us to get access to a wide variety of food products year-round, at affordable prices, and opens new markets for Canadian food producers. Despite those benefits and the fact that Canada is one of the few countries with a large food trade surplus, we still maintain very high import tariffs on key food products. Those include commodities under supply management, beef and veal meat, wheat, and barley. This is in sharp contrast to the low tariffs found in other similar export oriented countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Chile. Lowering our trade barriers to food, particularly with key emerging markets, is the best way for Canada to capitalize and expand upon its position as a large food exporter.