Note to Carney: the TRUTH about SUPPLY MANAGEMENT

If Canadian’s understood supply management better, Canada’s former Agriculture Minister Eugene Whelan would be right up there with Tommy Douglas for having created a brilliant public policy vehicle to sustain the economic health and food security of communities now and into the future.

Trump – seeking the support of Michigan and Wisconsin’s dairy farmers – will undoubtedly again call for SM’s head in upcoming tariff negotiations. Why? Cause US farmers are price-takers – at the mercy of large, vertically integrated dairy processors. Losing money, they need to milk more cows to pay the bills. If – under the guise of trade deals but, in fact, bowing down to trade bullying – we allow Ottawa to diminish Canada’s supply management programs for milk, poultry and eggs, we endanger our rights as a nation to sovereign food policy. We ensure our precious farmland will be depleted to provide short term return to multinationals rather than preserved and enhanced for the next generation of the family farm. We destroy the economic fabric of rural communities.

Yes Canada has high tariffs against dairy imports. A key outcome of the Uruguay Round of the GATT (1986-1994) was the “tariffication” of agriculture, which involved converting non-tariff barriers in agriculture into tariff equivalents. Like Trump’s China tariffs, they are meant to stem imports. Unlike Trump’s China tariffs, they are doing so for good, solid public policy reasons. Under Canada’s Supply Management system, which covers milk, chicken, turkey, eggs and hatching eggs, farmers receive their fair cost of production (allowing them to continue to farm sustainably), and consumers are assured a continuous supply of a safe, high quality product that meets Canadian demand.

Canada’s system of Supply Management is good public policy. Period.

Below are links to some of my columns in defense of Supply Management.

COLUMNS

2017