OTTAWA, July 26: Canada plans to offer foreign farmers greater access to dairy, poultry and egg markets to help kick-start the World Trade Organization’s troubled negotiations, provided other countries follow suit, a senior official said on Friday.

If we provide 5 per cent more access on our dairy and cheese markets, then the United States and European Union should too, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Canadian producers of dairy, poultry and egg products earned C$6.4 billion ($4.6 billion) last year, Statistics Canada data shows.

Canada’s market access offer would either come through a higher threshold on the amount of foreign eggs, dairy and poultry products it accepts before heavy import taxes kick in, or by trimming the tariffs in the existing formula, he said.

The proposal is to be made at a meeting of trade ministers from two dozen rich and middle income countries in Montreal next week.

The gathering is part of the run-up to September’s meeting of the 146 WTO ministers in Mexico.

Next week’s meeting aims to assess countries’ flexibility on farm export and production subsides, as well as tariffs on industrial goods, and their willingness to ease patent rules to give poor nations better access to life-saving medicines.

It is the first major gathering since the European Union last month agreed to break the link between farmers’ production and subsidies, handouts that have been blamed for the EU’s notorious wine lakes and butter mountains.

The EU’s reforms have the potential to break the (WTO) stalemate, the Canadian official said.

But the official said any move to change the mandate or operations of the Canadian Wheat Board would be off-limits for Canada.

The CWB sells major Western Canadian cereal grains on the world markets, pools the revenues and then distributes the earnings back to its farmer members. It has been the target of US and EU trade criticism of Canada.—Reuters