CANADA AND N.Z. BITTER

Hokitika Guardian, 3 July 1931, Page 5

CANADA AND N.Z. BITTER

VANCOUVER VIEWPOINT

“We don’t want United States butter, and our kinsfolk in New Zealand buy so much salmon, ‘paper, timber manufactures, Hour, furs, and other lines from us that we would welcome some of their butter to supplement our winter supply,” states a Vancouver weedy paper, “The Shauglmessy Standard,” in reference to New Zealand’s tariff retaliation to the Canadian eight cent, butter duty.

The article continues:—“When it is remembered that the extension to Canada of the preferential British tariff operating in New Zealand was the primary means by which wo increased our sales of goods to that Dominion from a few millions to almost twenty millions of dollars in a matter of ten or twelve years, it may he realised what we are losing. WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT.

“What, then, is it all about? To put it In a nutshell, it is simply the story of a small quantity of butter and the use that was made of it in a Canadian political campaign.

“Here in British Columbia we have no quarrel with that butter. We use it in preference to the U.S.A. butter we formerly received to fill the shortage in our local supply. We have continued to use it because we found it good butter, and readily paid one or two cents more a pound for it than for other outside butter sold here. Its coming here in increasing quantities did not seem to lower local prices for butter as the consumers might wish, Since the embargo, of eight cents a pound was put on the New Zealand butter and it- stopped, coming in, our butter prices are lower than they were last year, not higher. But it suited certain politicians to make a bogey of this New Zealand butter and talk the farmers, especially those of Quebec, into a fright about it, by subtle and often untrue statements about the maligin influence its presence here had on their prospects of prosperity.

MINISTER SHOULD VISIT N.Z. “This ‘political gup’ (there is no better name for it) was freely swallowed by many in the farming communities and the result was that the Government at Ottawa claimed a mandate to impose what has poved to be an embargo on the coming to Canada of New Zealand butter. Tn the result we may he thrown back on buying our butter from D.S.A. as of yore. Possibly to Ontario and those other provinces so accustomed to using U.S.A. butter this may not mean much, but to us in British Columbia it means a great deal. “All the Prime Ministers New Zealand has had for the past quarter of a century, with many of their Cabinet Ministers, have found time to visit and' tour through Canada. The olive branch has been held out freely and often to our .Canadian statesmen. Yet the proffered token of friendship seems to ftava been almost spurned. There is no in* stance we can remember of a Canadian Prime Minister visiting New Zealand, nor, except in one isolated case, did n Canadian Cabinet Minister go there during his term of office. This is neither courteous nor friendly to a sister Dominion. Little wonder that the Rt, Hon. G. W. Forbes now suggests that if Canada wants to discuss reciprocal trade matters again, site might send a Cabinet Minister to New Zealand for this purpose.”