Yesterday, there was a report in the Winnipeg Free Press, quoting the Minister of State for Agriculture, Jean-Pierre Blackburn:
“There is a need for new markets for the food sector like any other sector,” he told The Canadian Press. “But at the same time we know some specific aspects have to be protected.”
He said supply management allowed dairy and poultry industries to remain among the most profitable and stable in Canada.
“Here in Canada, supply management works,” said the minister.
“If we open our borders there will be huge difficulties for these sectors. There would need to be changes for the way we do things. And we’re functioning very well in Canada.”
“It’s part of the Conservative government’s tradition, to be close to the farmers,” he said.
Coudl the good Minister please tell me how protecting Canadian consumers from lower prices is good?
Could the good minister please explain why protecting our farmers from competition and preventing them from competing on the world market is good? Does he not know that when Australia and New Zealand ditched their supply management system, they became some of the largest exporters of these products?
Supply management doesn’t work for Canadians, unless you are a farmer already in the system. And that seems like a small group of people benefiting at the expense of the rest of us.
4 comments
real conservative says:
3 May 2010 at 9:27 (UTC -7 )
Supply management does protect farmers but not in the proper way. It protects their inefficiencies as you point out and does not encourage the change they need to incur in order to become more efficient. It makes no sense to encourage exports in an industry that you have to heavily subsidize unless of course you are ‘dumping’ product, something I have accused China of doing for years with industrial output.
The_Iceman says:
3 May 2010 at 9:34 (UTC -7 )
By supply management, are you referring to price collusion? I have to admit that I don’t follow agricultural commodities as closely as other resources, but you really should describe what exactly is meant by supply management if you are going to throw the government under the bus for citing it. Price collusion is bad. Making sure Canadians have first dibs on Canadian made food is not as bad. That may not be perfect for farmers, but 95% of Canadians don’t live on a farm and eat Canadian made food.
Taliesyn says:
3 May 2010 at 15:45 (UTC -7 )
Iceman – the problem with Supply Management, as it is applied in Canada on dairy, poultry and egg products is simple: The government, in collusion with the producers, restricts production through quotas, and prevents competing imports through high tariffs. Therefore, the producers have a captive market who have no choice but to pay whatever price the supply side decides they want. Since the producers can choose their rate of return, they have no incentive to be efficient, and they are prohibited from growing their business unless they can buy quota space from another producer.
johndoe124 says:
3 May 2010 at 9:52 (UTC -7 )
This is just wrong in so many ways. Forcing the consumer to pay inflated prices is an attack on private property rights; it’s anti-free market; all the money that is redirected into the phony farm industry is money that isn’t spent in the real economy. Maxime Bernier needs to have a frank discussion with these nincompoops.
Just one more reason why I’m quickly loosing confidence in the CPC.