Protecting Canada’s supply management system will not jeopardize negotiations with the White House, Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, said Thursday. (The Logic)

Talking point: The U.S. has long pushed to expand access to the tightly controlled Canadian dairy market. In the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Canada agreed to open up 3.5 per cent of its market share to U.S. dairy products—setting tariff rate quotas (TRQs) that cap the amount that can enter without sky-high duties. Canada excludes retailers and the food service industry from import permits, which the U.S. has been unsuccessful at challenging. The Globe and Mail reported that Ottawa is thinking about loosening those restrictions. Parliament recently passed a law that would prevent the federal government from raising the TRQs for supply-managed goods or reducing the tariff applied to anything above those limits. “It’s a fundamental tenet of our economic and food security policy. The Americans understand that,” LeBlanc told a Senate committee.