Alberta farmers brace for canola tariffs — again

In 1922, a man settled down near the village of Stirling along Highway 4 in southern Alberta. He and his son laid the foundations for a farm that would sustain their family for generations to come.

Today, John McKee operates this family farm on thousands of acres of land. He and his son grow canola and various grains after he and his lineage endured all the highs and lows that come with the trade.

“It has weathered wars, droughts, feasts, famines, good times, bad times,” said McKee.

However, a new — and sudden — threat has arisen to throw his entire operation into chaos just weeks before he was planning to hit the fields again.

“We’re less than a month away from seeding. I don’t think we’ll be able to grow canola and sell it for less than we were and have it be profitable,” McKee said.

On March 20, China is set to impose 100 per cent retaliatory tariffs on Canadian canola and peas, and 25 per cent tariffs on pork and aquatic products — loosely mirroring Canada’s EV and steel and aluminum levies.

This has caused the price of rapeseed oil, another name for canola oil, to tank.

“Canola prices have dropped, basically, $1.75 a bushel from Friday to today, the last time I checked.”

China is a top market for Canadian canola that represents close to $5 billion in export value.

Now, McKee is trying to wrap his head around how these tariffs even came into being in the first place.

“China put their tariff on in retaliation to the tariff on their electric vehicles. They responded to Canada in a form that didn’t hurt the people that the EV tariffs were protecting,” said McKee.

He says a tariff on agriculture is a tariff directly on your table and in your belly.

McKee says farming used to be a simple life of honest work, but it’s become a political battleground in recent years.

“It’s just not as simple as growing food that somebody needs and they will purchase it,” he said.

This is not the first time Beijing has targeted Canadian canola as part of hostile trading.

In 2019, the country targeted canola export licenses as an economically sensitive pressure point — widely viewed in Canada as a political response to the detention of senior Huawei telecom executive Meng Wanzhou by Canada at the request of American law enforcement.

Those tariffs eventually lifted three years later, in May of 2022.

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Canadian canola markets strong as international exports increase

While McKee described the current situation with China and the United States’ tariffs as ‘chaos,’ an economist with Southgrow Regional Economic Development says its this unpredictability that is creating the biggest challenges.

“Everybody suffers when we can’t operate in a predictable environment,” said Peter Casurella, the executive director with Southgrow. “That’s really all we need from an economic development standpoint, from doing business to brokering trade deals, we just need predictability.

He echoed McKee’s remarks about the widespread effect these tariffs will have on Canada.

“The collective impact on you and on me, who are not farmers, is going to be that our prices go up at the grocery store and other places,” he said.

“It’s going to push prices up for everybody at a time when we’re already dealing with an affordability crisis.

Despite the uncertainty, McKee is taking a positive outlook on this frustrating situation.

“It’s crazy to be in this position. I think it can be resolved and I think there’s people that know how to resolve it and I trust it’s going to happen sooner rather than later.”