March 7, 2025
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Canada-Philippines FTA Consultations
Global Affairs Canada
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 0G2
Re: Consultations on a possible free trade agreement with the Philippines
The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance (CAFTA) is a coalition of national organizations advocating for a freer and fairer international trade environment for the agriculture and agri-food sector.
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CAFTA's members include farmers, ranchers, processors, producers, and exporters from major trade sectors such as beef, pork, grains, oilseeds, pulses, soy and the sugar and processed food industries.
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A fair and open international trade environment for agri-food is in Canada’s economic interest. Agri-food is responsible for 1 in 9 jobs in Canada, and the majority are in export-based agri-food. In 2023, Canada exported $99.1 billion in agriculture and food products, including raw agricultural materials, fish and seafood, and processed foods. More than half of our agricultural production is exported or processed to be exported.
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Canada’s agri-food exporters are unfortunately faced with a very uncertain North American and international trade environment. Our most important trading partner is imposing unilateral trade barriers and undermining the North American and global trading system, and the rules-based order on which the system rests.
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CAFTA strongly believes that Canada must continue to work to strengthen and protect this system, upon which so much of our economic security rests. Continuing to negotiate FTAs with potential partners such as the Philippines sends an important message of our commitment to freer trade. As we have noted in our support for discussions with ASEAN, competitors including Australia and New Zealand currently enjoy preferential access to the market of the Philippines, making a potential FTA an important means of creating more competitive opportunities for Canadian exporters.
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CAFTA therefore supports the opening of these discussions and looks forward to continued consultation as they advance. It is CAFTA’s opinion that Canada should prioritize comprehensive elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers for agriculture and food products. Among non-tariff barriers are comprehensive guidelines on sanitary and phytosanitary regulations that promise predictability and efficiency for farmers and exporters and including agricultural biotechnology along the lines of the recently signed CEPA with Indonesia. Given the largely hortatory nature of text concerning sustainable trade in agriculture in the cases of the Indonesia CEPA and the Ecuador FTA, we do not see value of such language in this and future agreements.
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Michael Harvey
Executive Director