You are right. Bill 202 only makes it against the law to make commitments related to supply management. Effectively removing it from the table.
The UK suspended talks in January 2024, primarily due to supply chain management being limited in the amount of cheese it could import to Canada. Now with Canada wanting to diversify from the US, a good partner would be the UK. So, to facilitate that Bill 202 was introduced preventing trade negotiators from including dairy in any deal…. Ok, waiting for someone to spin this as being Trump’s fault.
This issue prevented diversification from the US. Isn’t diversification the proposed solution from Trump according to Carney? Why put laws in place that prevent it from happening or require overturning laws implemented less than 5 months ago?
You’re defending supply management when Canada is about the only developed nation to still use it? I think I finally see the issue. We should have similar for all industries in Canada?
Bill C-202 passed with unanimous consent in Parliament. I wonder who you think your political supporters are going to be? Scott Aitchison, MP from Parry Sound? He was against supply management in the past, but voted for this bill.
It seems that all MP’s are backing Carney on this. He must be doing something right.
There is no purely capitalist nation, they all support domestic industries through different methods: tax policy, preferential purchasing, subsidies, or supply management. Canada has historically chosen supply management as the primary support mechanism for a few industries like farming. The US uses subsidies. I’m not saying subsidies are the only way, I am saying that successive Canadian governments have said that it is our preferred way and the legislation just confirms it.
Until the US gets rid of subsidies for farming, why should we drop SM?
You have said we should diversify from the US. This isn’t about the US. This is delaying/preventing us from making deals with other countries. It has already stopped a deal with the UK for free trade across many industries for us just to protect one. And those that have gotten rid of it, such as NZ and Australia are better for it: Lower consumer pricing, more exports and more competitive.
@Uzi is right on this count. Dairy supply management is an impediment to trade negotiations with virtually all our trading partners. If we must protect our dairy industry from outside competition, we should migrate that protection to the same sorts of subsidy structures that other nations use, and which they are not in a position to object to in trade negotiations.
Also, this would mean cheaper imported cheeses in the deli section, which is selfishly my primary concern in this matter.
The simple fact of the matter is that dairy supply management survives largely because it’s a major political sacred cow in part of Quebec.* This is periodically less relevant to the Conservatives because they’re often not all that competitive in those parts of Quebec anyways, but their leadership selection rules mean that the party leader is unlikely to be hostile supply management: reference Andrew Scheer making a show of drinking a glass of milk on the podium of the leadership convention when he won.
*Other rural areas have similar opinions, or at least the dairy farmers do, but outside of Quebec most of those voters are locked in for the Conservatives for the typical rural/urban issues. Still, if a Tory PM were to get rid of dairy supply management there would be very loud howls of betrayal from that demographic.
Actually, as I’m one of the more farming-adjacent posters here I should maybe elaborate a bit. The farm I grew up on was mixed beef/grain and we only milked for our own consumption, and I haven’t been on the farm or even talked to the neighbours who are dairy farmers about this subject in decades, but I do have immediate family members who do speak with dairy farmers on a regular basis, and I do hear things. Still, don’t take anything I say here as gospel. I might have completely missed some important recent change to the system or some such.
The way that supply management works is that in order to sell milk commercially you must have “Quota”. Dairy quota is bought and sold amongst dairy farmers, and the value of a farm’s quota is extremely high - $30-50k per milking cow. A farm’s quota is generally worth as much or more than its herd. This is a massive barrier to entry, however, once you have that quota, compared to other farmers you have a license to print money. Milk prices are stable and far more lucrative than other agricultural commodities. Established dairy farms provide stable income in a way that other farms can only dream of. Outside of droughts driving up feed prices, dairy farms aren’t subject to the price fluctuations typical of most other farming.
This explains why dairy farmers are extremely vocal about continuing supply management. They each have millions upon millions invested in their quota. If the value of that quota suddenly evaporated, and simultaneously the price of milk significantly dropped due to increased competition, their financial position would switch from secure to devastated overnight. Obviously if we were to ditch supply management we would need to provide some sort of compensation for that, but I trust that explains the industry hostility to change.
This also explains why the dairy lobby on the Prairies doesn’t have the same political leverage as it does out east. The bulk of agriculture out here is grain/beef/hog. There is plenty of dairy, but it’s outnumbered by other agriculture. And honestly, there’s a bit of resentment amongst other farmers towards the dairy industry, because they’re all fully exposed to market fluctuations and such, and dairy farmers are not.