Saskatchewan Dairy Producers are on the losing end of the proposed US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Joy Smith, the Manager of Policy and Communication with Sask Milk says the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement is a lose, lose for the Province’s Dairy Industry.

She is concerned by the concessions Canada made in the Dairy Sector in order to reach an agreement.

Smith says this jeopardizes a lot of planned investments in the Dairy industry.

She notes giving the U-S more market access is going to be hundreds of millions of dollars in lost economic activity in Canada, and Saskatchewan will feel its share of that.

“This is an additional 3.59% access this doesn’t include the access that the US already enjoys with Canada which is already significant. In fact, far more of our market is open to them, than their market open to us. Now, this is going to make that imbalance even worse. They had a 5:1 trade surplus with Canada now they get another 3.59% of our market.”

The Federal Government has said it will look at compensation for Dairy Farmers impacted by the deal, but Smith says farmers are not for sale.

“Dairy farmers don’t want tax dollars. Dairy Farmers don’t want government buyouts and subsidies like they have in the U-S and other jurisdictions. If they think throwing a few dollars at us is going to somehow mitigate the damage to the future of the industry they’re not thinking clearly.”

Another concession in the agreement eliminates Class 7 which relates to domestic pricing that governs milk ingredients such as skim milk powder and milk proteins is also a concern.

She says we’re still waiting to hear specific details around the implementation of this and what exactly that means.

“To be blunt, the elimination of Class 7 is basically telling our farmers that they are not allowed to price any of their product at a world competitive price. That’s what that’s done. There's been millions of dollars in investment into processing and further processing announced in Canada since Class 7. Where we were going to be creating Canadian jobs, in Canadian processing facilities to provide products to Canadians and elsewhere and this is going to put that in jeopardy.”

Smith says there is no doubt that it’s not going to displace small Canadian farms … of course it is.

She says under the agreement the U-S can now not only tell us how to price but they can now send their heavily subsidized milk into Canada under their new additional market access.

More information on the USMCA and its impact on Canada’s Dairy sector will be discussed at the Sask Milk Fall Producer Meetings October 15 at the Eagles Hall in Swift Current, October 16 at the Legends Centre in Warman and October 17th at the Royal Canadian Legion at Fort Qu’Appelle.

Saskatchewan’s Dairy Industry includes 165 family dairy farms, 5000 jobs and contributes $400 million to Saskatchewan’s G-D-P.