REGINA – Provincial leaders are voicing their concerns after news broke on Thursday that India is imposing a 30 per cent duty on yellow pea imports.
Premier Scott Moe made his thoughts known about the situation with a post on the X platform.
“Very concerning to hear about new tariffs imposed on yellow peas by India today,” Moe posted. “Our government took immediate action to ask the federal government to act swiftly to ensure the removal of these tariffs.”
Moe also posted contents of a letter sent to federal Minister of Agriculture Heath MacDonald and Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu, expressing that his government is “deeply concerned” to learn about the new duty.
His letter states:
“India is an incredibly important market for Saskatchewan with 480 million of pea exports being shipped into India in 2024. Now, more than ever, Saskatchewan and Canada’s producers and exporters need certainty. We urge the federal government to immediately engage with India to address this issue and negotiate an agreement to ensure trade certainty for the agriculture sector.”
At the Legislature Thursday, Opposition Leader Carla Beck also spoke on the latest tariffs, which come on top of the tariffs by China on canola as well as the ongoing US tariff situation.
“My message is pretty clear, pretty straightforward. This cannot stand,” said Beck. “We need to ensure that both levels of government are doing everything that they can to have these tariffs removed immediately. We know that the Premier was talking not that long ago about his good relations with India. We need to leverage every relationship, every trade office, every channel available to ensure that pea producers in this province, who have already seen the biggest drop when it comes to commodity prices, that they are not further impacted and punished.”
The impact to the provincial economy is huge, said NDP Finance critic Trent Wotherspoon.
“It’s a really big hit because India combined with China are really big markets for peas. Pea producers have already seen that price plummet with the disproportionate hit that they’re taking with the Chinese tariffs, which really just points to why we need to make sure we end those tariffs with China and restore market access, and we need to immediately act to ensure we have full market access and end tariffs with India."
