Trade is a priority Pulse Canada wants federal election candidates to have “front-and-centre” on their respective platforms.
Pulse Canada is the latest group to make public election priorities they’d like to see candidates address on the campaign trail. The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Cattle Association released their respective priorities last week.
President Greg Cherewyk says every industry, including agriculture, is aware of the fact the world has changed dramatically in the last three months due to tariffs imposed by the United States, China, and India, three of Canada’s largest trading partners.
From a pulse export perspective, Pulse Canada says China imports on average over $700 million worth of Canadian yellow peas each year.
In 2023, Canada exported US$543.9 million worth of lentils to India, along with US$41.9 million of yellow peas and US$7.6 million of chickpeas, according to sector trend analysis from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
The United States isn’t a huge market for Canadian pulses compared to China and India, but still an important one, accounting for 10 per cent of total pea exports, five per cent of lentil exports, between 20 and 30 per cent of chickpea exports, and about 30 per cent of dry bean exports. The numbers come from an article written by Jon Driedger, Vice-President of LeftField Commodity Research on the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers website. The article can be found here.
“You can kind of understand, you know, right off the top why it’s such an important issue for us,” said Cherewyk.
He says whoever is going to form the next federal government needs to open lines of communication with not only China and India, but the rest of the world. That means talking to nations that Canada doesn’t see eye-to-eye with, including China and India. He adds its time to “double-down” on what he called “trade-first diplomacy.”
In the context of the election, Cherewyk says the leaders of the Liberal Party and Conservative Party “seem to have the right approach, seem to have the right attitude”. He referenced Liberal Leader Mark Carney as a person who prides himself on being a “pragmatist”, while referencing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre who prides himself as being “common sense” – two qualities Cherewyk believes can work within the trade-first diplomacy approach.
“We’re going to have to compartmentalize how we approach trade with other countries and compartmentalize our interests. We can advance our trade, we can advance our interests with respect to agri-food trade and manage political tensions at the same time. We can prioritize our economic partnership with a country and advance other interests that we have with them behind the scenes. That’s going to require that we do things a bit differently and it may require that we build in some guardrails to our trade relationships, but it doesn’t mean that we abandon them entirely.” Cherewyk said of the approach.
“I think that model can work in other sectors as well – green tech, critical minerals, education – many of these sectors can anchor our efforts to re-engage with the world. From our perspective, yeah, let’s use common sense, let’s be pragmatic, (we) don’t have to abandon our values but we need to understand that influence comes from presence – you show up in partnership as sectors with capital to invest, knowledge to share, credibility. You’ll move the needle far more than simply using rhetoric from a half a world away.”
Pulse Canada is encouraging members “to engage with local candidates to understand their plans for securing Canada’s place in the global marketplace.” The national organization is also committed to “working with politicians of all stripes to advance the interests of Canada’s pulse sector.”
