{"id":847034,"date":"2026-08-05T13:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/847034\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T13:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:54:10","slug":"the-dairy-sector-is-lobbying-hard-in-usmca-talks-the-government-didnt-want-you-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/847034\/","title":{"rendered":"The dairy sector is lobbying hard in USMCA talks. The government didn\u2019t want you to know"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Dairy cows graze in Saint-Pie, Que., in July, 2025. Dairy special interest groups and dairy farmers engaged in a letter-writing campaign to influence the federal government\u2019s trade position ahead of USMCA negotiations.Christinne Muschi\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Matt Malone is a scholar at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the author of Open Governments, Secret Canada: Hiding Information Other Countries Share. <\/p>\n

Last year, when the federal government invited<\/a> Canadians to share their views about the operation of USMCA, 5,143 stakeholders heeded the call.<\/p>\n

In its summary of the findings, Ottawa noted<\/a> that a cross-section of Canadian society \u2013 businesses, industry associations, unions, individuals, civil society and Indigenous groups \u2013 \u201cvoiced strong support for maintaining Canada\u2019s supply\u2011management system for dairy, poultry, and eggs as a pillar of food sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the actual submissions told a very different story \u2013 about a lopsided effort to influence policy.<\/p>\n

Approximately 90 per cent of all submissions (4,572 out of 5,143) came from dairy special interest groups or dairy farmers engaged in a letter-writing campaign to influence the federal government\u2019s trade position. I only learned that by filing a request under the Access to Information Act. <\/p>\n

All the public got was an opaque summary<\/a> of the consultations, leaving it unclear where any specific input came from. As with so much of the Carney government\u2019s approach to trade with the United States, the attitude was tight-lipped and need-to-know. <\/p>\n

That approach conflates two very different things: on the one hand, the necessary secrecy our trade negotiators require to conduct effective negotiations with a belligerent Trump administration and, on the other, the unnecessary secrecy that special interest groups seeking to influence our negotiators do not deserve. <\/p>\n

This is a policy design problem. Special interests seeking to exert influence on trade negotiators must be subject to transparency by default. Those lobbying the government to take certain trade positions should do so in the open. Instead, the government has too often facilitated access in secret. <\/p>\n

Canadians should not become inured to this style of governance. We saw it in the development of a federal AI strategy, too. There, the federal government decided not to publish the submissions it received about if or how to govern AI; instead, the feds simply used AI<\/a> to summarize those consultations. <\/p>\n

Ottawa wants to hear from Canadians on what AI system transparency looks like<\/a><\/p>\n

In similar fashion, the \u201cWhat We Heard\u201d report for the USMCA consultations only summarized stakeholders\u2019 views.<\/p>\n

The dairy special interest groups and individuals\u2019 letter I obtained advocated: \u201cIt is crucial that no new dairy concessions are granted in upcoming negotiations.\u201d <\/p>\n

This may or may not be a worthwhile position for our trade negotiators to stake out during negotiations with the United States and Mexico. But Canadians deserve to know what special interests are seeking to influence our negotiators \u2013 and on what topics.<\/p>\n

Doing so helps correct the inevitable limits of representative government and ensure that any eventual trade agreement with the Americans reflects, as best as possible, public rather than private interests. <\/p>\n

While many Canadians are willing to grant significant manoeuvring room to the Prime Minister and his delegates to deal with the erratic Trump administration, they also understand that secrecy is how governments hide corruption, maladministration and anything else they do not want to share with taxpayers.<\/p>\n

That tension was on display in the deal signed between Canada and the United States that opened the Gordie Howe International Bridge, too, where the initially secret contents of that agreement were the subject of messaging by the Prime Minister that was later directly contradicted<\/a> by objective reporting. <\/p>\n

While some might caution against allowing too much transparency during negotiations, since it risks opening our negotiating hand to the Americans, the strategy of our negotiators and the demands of special interests are two very different things. The U.S. itself makes consultees\u2019 inputs on USMCA public<\/a> anyway. <\/p>\n

Ottawa abusing access to information law to avoid releasing documents, watchdog says<\/a><\/p>\n

As well, Canada\u2019s entire access to information system \u2013 where reams of sensitive documents, including Cabinet confidences, are uploaded in the original before being redacted \u2013 uses American software, Granicus\u2019s AMANDA solution. During the last federal election, Carney committed<\/a> to an \u201cobjective\u201d review of the system; but so far, he has not followed through<\/a> on that promise.<\/p>\n

The result of this secrecy is that average Canadians are being left in the dark. If Canada is going to get the best deal it can, we must simultaneously provide our trade negotiators with the latitude to deliberate in confidence while constraining the special interests that are trying to influence the terms of their work. Left with little sense of what special interests are advocating the government, the public has no opportunity to constrain undesirable moves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Dairy cows graze in Saint-Pie, Que., in July, 2025. Dairy special interest groups…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,45,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-847034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}