Current Agriculture, Food & Resource Issues
D. Surprenant and J.-P. Gervais
Figure 4 Importers’ satisfaction with the current Canadian TRQ for chicken products.
3.6 percent and 1.8 percent respectively. Finally, 1.8 percent of importers wish to have the
licences administered by chicken producers’ organizations. A centralized import control
by a state trading agency is an alternative that is totally rejected by importers.
A further set of questions measures the importers’ perceptions towards the current
TRQ administration procedures. More than 65 percent are either very satisfied or satisfied
with the current Canadian chicken import system (see figure 4). Responses to another
question indicated that a majority of importers (51.8 percent) believed that the current
system did not facilitate entry by new importing firms into the market for import licences.
Regarding the clarity of the Canadian chicken import licensing procedures, a vast majority
of importers (80.8 percent) consider them to be clear, very clear or extremely clear (see
figure 5).
As argued earlier, quantitative trade restrictions create rents for import licence
holders. Firms operating at different levels of the market will generally not face similar
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