Editor's Note: This story previously appeared on StratfordToday.ca.
Stratford has begun taking steps to make sure the impacts of potential tariffs are mitigated, as some of the city’s leaders recently had talks on that topic. And according to one of those leaders, nothing is off the table.
Joani Gerber was part of Mayor Martin Ritsma’s conversations earlier this week on what the city’s response to the situation should include, and she definitively said that no stone should remain unturned.
“Should tariffs become a reality in 30 days, we’ve discussed initiatives similar to our pandemic response,” she said. “That means we could hold interest or penalties on property tax and Festival Hydro debts, transitioning small business grant funding towards diversification strategies and many more. While there are some complexities because of the provincial election and prorogued federal parliament, I’m confident that the municipality via council’s leadership will do whatever it can to help mitigate the impacts of proposed tariffs.”
A national theme that has come up during all of this is something akin to Gerber’s comment on diversification and how Canada at a macro level can separate itself better from the US dollars that make up a large portion of the economy. It’s something she said Stratford takes great pride in but there are still some vulnerabilities.
“Our diversity is something we take great pride in – manufacturing, food processing, tourism and hospitality all make Stratford what it is today,” she said. “The reality of the proposed tariffs is that almost nothing is off limits. Even an economy as diverse as Stratford’s is still not tariff-proof.”
One of the areas where the city and surrounding county could feel the sting of tariffs greatly is agriculture and agri-businesses. Derek Van De Walle, president of the Perth County Federation of Agriculture (PCFA), indicated the exposure level they face is not insignificant.
“We obviously have some products that are exported more than others – some of our supply-matched open industries are more domestic as opposed to being international,” he said. “Some stats I’ve collected show that 99.5 per cent of greenhouse vegetables grown in Canada are exported to the US, and on top of that a large part of our beef and pork are also sold abroad. And the Canadian response with the retaliatory tariffs is aimed at levelling the scales, but we buy livestock feed or vet products and farm machinery from the US along with crop protection products as well. Importing some of these products to help us produce the food we make will make prices go up indirectly and the consumer is going to see that at the grocery store unfortunately.”
Something Van De Walle said the PCFA has advocated for in the past is bringing more of the processing stage of the food chain to Canada, allowing farmers to retain a higher percentage of the profit from their livestock after sale. It’s something he would like to see the various levels of government advocate a little more enthusiastically for.
“A lot of our beef is sold to the United States and gets processed there, and then the finished product is brought back here at a higher value now that it’s finished,” he said. “We would like to see this process come to Canada, and here in Ontario so that we can provide value-added products on our market with Canadian farmers benefitting from it. We would also like to see the continued push to buy local, regardless of a tariff war going on or not.”
Having food production close to home is a strategic priority, Gerber said, and something that has been discussed as a stabilizing force for the local economy. It was just one of the several short and long-term implications that could come out of the fallout.
“There is no doubt that putting the ‘mill next to the mine’ helps create stability in the food sector, and agribusiness, including the agri-technology and food production, are priority sectors and we have excellent anchor tenant with companies like Alltech/Masterfeeds, Trillium Hatchery and South West Vets currently in Stratford,” she said. “If these tariffs are enacted, the immediate impacts would be to our manufacturers moving goods to the US. Local estimates, based on Premier Ford’s projections of job losses, would be a 20 per cent unemployment rate. Job insecurity curbs spending, especially recreational spending, so our hospitality and retail sectors would experience an associated decline. On the positive side, the groundswell of ‘True North, Team Canada’ and shopping locally is something we should be doing more of regardless.”