Cornholio in Canada

From a CBC article
Why exactly are we picking a fight with King Corn?
January 27, 2007

***

Collectively, our farmers produce about nine million tonnes of corn a year, a meagre 3.5 per cent of the 260 million tonnes produced by their U.S. competitors.

Canadian growers do not supply enough to meet demand here from the major users such as livestock producers, who use corn as feed, and food processors, who use it in everything from cookies and candies to pet food and soft drinks.

The result is that Canada is a net importer of corn and the bulk of those imports come from the U.S. Looking down the road, those imports are likely to increase as more and more ethanol plants are built in Canada to try to make cleaner burning fuel from such plants as, well, corn.

...

Just about all the groups with an interest in corn in Canada, producers and users alike, agree that U.S. farm subsidies are a bad thing because they distort prices and trade. But when it comes to deciding what the Canadian government should do about this, the consensus falls apart.

In 2005, at the urging of the corn producers, the Liberal government imposed a temporary duty of $1.65 a bushel on imported U.S. corn. This meant that Canadian producers could raise their prices accordingly and still compete.

But livestock producers and food processors were unhappy because their costs rose. Hog producers predicted an exodus of piglets across the border to cheaper fattening pens. Food processors said they were at a disadvantage because they had to pay a higher price for corn products like syrups than their U.S. competitors.

The duty was removed in 2006 when the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, a quasi-judicial body that investigates such matters, ruled that other factors, such as a rising Canadian dollar, were mostly responsible for the corn producers' woes.