“The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.”

A plan by Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada to combat climate change by reducing the use of fertilizer is under fire from provincial leaders and farmers who say it will reduce output, cut into farming income and increase food prices at grocery stores at a time when the nation can ill afford it.
Similar proposals in Europe have led to furious protests in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Canadians acting in solidarity with those protests took to the streets of Ottawa and other Canadian cities over the weekend to vent their frustrations.

In the name of combating climate change, Mr. Trudeau’s plan is to reduce farmers’ emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, by 30 percent by 2030. The plan is similar to the measures taken by the Dutch government. Dutch farmers have been told they must reduce their use of fertilizers by 50 percent during the same time period for many of the same reasons.

The Canadian federal government’s goals came up during a meeting Friday in Saskatoon of the federal minister of agriculture and agri-food, Marie Claude Bibeau, and her provincial counterparts from Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan. After the meeting, the provincial agriculture ministers called Mr. Trudeau’s fertilizer plan worryingly arbitrary. 

Saskatchewan’s agriculture minister, David Marit, was blunt in a press release sent to local news outlets following the meeting.
“We’re really concerned with this arbitrary goal,” Mr. Marit said in the release. “The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.”

Specifically, Canada needs to ratify the deal. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged legislators last week to quickly approve the new continental trade pact, but the main opposition party said it wanted to study the deal, indicating the ratification process could be slow.

Trudeau lost his legislative majority in the October election.

Ratification in Canada is expected to wrap up by April, but the passage of USMCA does not trigger a timeline for the deal to become enforceable.
All three countries need to meet their obligations, and that’s a heavy lift.

Officials in the U.S., Mexico and Canada must spend the next months working to meet all the necessary obligations outlined in the deal. That includes Mexico making sure it is prepared to protect workers’ union rights and that all three countries have updated their rules that govern how cars qualify for reduced tariffs.

Once the countries have completed all the required preliminary work, leaders will notify each other in an exchange of letters. The deal will enter into force about 60 days after that exchange of letters.

The three countries are aiming for the pact to go into effect this summer, but trade experts say that’s an ambitious timeline.

A former aide to the president has cautioned that the pact may not be in force until 2021.

Sources: Politico, Reuters