Canada calls on China at WTO council meeting to deliver evidence to back its canola ban

Canada has used a major World Trade Organization gathering to demand China deliver evidence that Canadian canola is contaminated.

Stephen de Boer, the Canadian ambassador to the world's leading trade body in Geneva, told the WTO's general council on Tuesday that Canada wants to meet in China in good faith to hear its science-based concerns that recent Canadian canola shipments were, in fact, tainted.

China banned shipments from two Canadian canola companies last month. This week, the government announced China had similarly banned pork from two Canadian companies.

De Boer's intervention at one of the WTO's most senior decision-making bodies is an attempt to push China, which has stonewalled requests for Canadian experts to travel to the People's Republic to examine Chinese evidence on the canola.

The government says two separate inspections by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have turned up nothing, while several cabinet ministers have said China's complaint about the quality of the canola shipments is not science-based...

This was excerpted from the 7 May 2019 edition of CBC News.