I mentioned a couple of blogs back that I would be visiting Bruce County in Southern Ontario.  Well what a wonderful three days I had in the region with MP Larry Miller (Chair of the Federal Parliamentary Agriculture Committee) and Stan Eby (President of Canada Agrifood Trade Alliance) - both local farmers.  Part of my mission was to find someone in the region who Stan or Larry did not know: I failed.  The weather was spectacular and the landscape beautiful.  I knew that agriculture and tourism were the two big economic activities in the region, but I didn’t realise just how big. 

I gave three addresses during the course of my visit.  The first was a breakfast with tourism operators.  This was an audience very committed to their industry and interested in, but already quite knowledgeable about, the New Zealand experience.  This was a lot of fun.  I spoke for too long and there were many many questions.  

In the afternoon I travelled with Larry to the top of the Bruce Peninsula to Tobermory and took a boat ride out to Flowerpot Island, which is in the water-way between Georgian Bay and Lake Huron.  The clarity of the water here is remarkable and you can see the bottom at 30 feet.  There are also many shipwrecks in the area, many of which are well preserved by the clean cold water (although cold is a relative term as the day we were there it was about 22 degrees celsius).  We spent some time over a wooden wreck from 1885 which was in shallow water and the view, even from the boat, was remarkable.

I also met with the board of directors of the largest Farmer’s Mutual Group in the area.  The board were deeply knowledgeable about farming in their region and all of them had direct contact with the industry either as farmers themselves, service providers, bankers, etc.  The focus of my presentation was around  New Zealand’s economic and trade experience, the dominance of primary production in how New Zealand makes its way as a country (with tourism a strong second), and our commitment to free trade as we export most of what we produce – be it dairy, beef, sheep meat, wool, horticulture or wine.   This exchange inevitably arrived at discussion of Canada’s own trade profile, a trade dominated by exports to the US (70-75 percent of total exports). 

This and other discussions I had during actual farm visits highlighted the reality that Canadian farmers are not all in the same space when it comes to trade.  Most are free traders, but the supply-managed industries (dairy, poultry, eggs) stand apart and tariffs and regulatory barriers mean that those industries are protected from competition.  This is anathema to New Zealand as it restricts our ability to export what we produce best, to Canada, dairy.  

My final address was to the monthly Mayoral Council, where the eight mayors for the area meet and discuss shared challenges.  The mayors were very welcoming and had a lot of questions.  We also discussed trade and agriculture as well as the structure and experience of local government in New Zealand as compared with Canada.  I joined the mayors for lunch, where, inevitably, stories of personal connections between the mayors and New Zealanders they had met either in Canada or in New Zealand, were to the fore.  

This was a great trip.  Larry and Stan succeeded in exposing me to some of the grassroots reality of regional Canada and I was able to explain, in the context of a very warm relationship at all levels between New Zealand and Canada, that while overwhelmingly we had common cause on so many issues, we were currently agreeing to disagree on the issue of Canada’s supply-managed policies which restrict New Zealand dairy exports to Canada.