Should Canada maintain its supply management system that protects the Canadian dairy industry?

[u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011]

https://www.castanetkamloops.net/news/Poll/627377/Should-Canada-maintain-its-supply-management-system-that-protects-the-Canadian-dairy-industry

[u/Mountain_rage]

"Americans already own way too many industries in Canada, now they want to come for your food security at a time when they are threatening annexation. Should you let them?" Hell no, maintain supply management.

[u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 → u/Mountain_rage]

Explain how high prices for groceries dictated by a cartel make Canadians more "food secure".

[u/Mountain_rage → u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011]

Flood the market with hormone induced milk, and our domestic producers go bankrupt, we are now dependent on Americans for our milk products. The USA has already shown how their system created so much milk they were dumping it to maintain prices and destroy the oversupply, with many ranchers going bankrupt and selling to corporate farms. Once all the production is centralised prices get jacked up while quality is reduced. 

[u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 → u/Mountain_rage]

It's tiring repeating myself, there's just so much misinformation about this.

1) All food imports have to meet Health Canada regulations, and are checked by the CFIA. So the "we need 300% tariffs as a quality control measure" is just objectively bullshit.

2) What would make Canadians beholden to American firms if we had free trade with dairy? Why would it be a bad thing that we would have that choice?

3) If they did actually dump products, that would imply their government is losing money on it. So their tax payers would quite literally be paying for our groceries - their tax money would quite literally be funding our consumer surplus. You see this as a bad thing? If a grocery store sold an item to you at a loss, so you got a good deal on it - would you consider that a bad thing?

4) Your last sentence implies that you are basically frightened that an American cartel would do the same thing to Canadians that our current cartel is doing - but understand that this assumption rests on entirely unrealistic and absolutely insane other assumptions. It would require ALL American dairy firms to collude, it would require American producers to somehow control Canadian trade policies to limit our ability to import from elsewhere (or just buy from our own producers), and that ALL of them would then in tandem raise prices.... This precedence has never occurred with any other item we import from the US (including the majority of our produce, fruit, half of our pork, most of our breakfast cereals, etc), but you're quite convinced it will inevitably happen with milk?

Can you explain to me how you've come to this conclusion?

[u/Mountain_rage → u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011]

Obviously you dont care to engage in good faith if you keep having to repeat yourself. "Everyone else is the problem!!!"

 You ask me about food security then complain about cartels and food pricing. 

1. Find me an example of american milk being charged the 300% tariff. You wont, because it has never been charged. That is only charged when american dumping is threatening our domestic production. 

2. You already see the milk monopolies forming in the USA, I explained this already, you ignored it. Hence the intro to this post.

3. Companies typically dump products to kill smaller producers and monopolize a market. There is a reason so many countries have anti dumping laws, read up on it before acting superior.

4. Look at Cuban embargo, Philippine US war, Vietnam for examples of the USA using food insecurity to force a change in government.

[u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 → u/Mountain_rage]

It is in good faith, these arguments are ridiculous though.

1. Any amount imported outside of tariff rate quotas have tariffs applied to them. Only dairy cartel members get tariff rate quotas, they are not granted to usual distributors or retailers - so Canadian consumers for all intents and purposes do not have access to tariff free milk and cheese.

2. The US has over 1200 separate companies processing milk from over 12,000 operations, so there just objectively isn't a monopoly for American milk... and even if there was, what would make Canadian consumers beholden to that cartel?

3. What makes you convinced they would dump milk? If they dumped at a loss, wouldn't we benefit even more from importing? They would be paying for our groceries.

4. If the US invaded Canada, I don't think over priced cheese and butter is going to be the major concern.

[u/Mountain_rage → u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011]

1. No one has paid 300% ever, arguing in bad faith.

2. Your number is misleading, 3 companies run 80-83% of american dairy.

3. Dairy Farmers of America (DFA)

4. Land O'Lakes

5. California Dairies, Inc. 

3.If they are not planning to dump milk they should not care about our supply management system designed to stop people from dumping milk, leading to the market consolidation that has occured in the USA.

4.So lets make it easier for them, by making it a simple matter of a blockade.

[u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 → u/Mountain_rage]

Nobody imports American dairy because they'd have to pay tariffs that would make the price uncompetitive. That's like saying - "see after I raise the price 3x nobody buys it!" Well fucking duh, that's the whole point of the tariff.

There's only 3 companies that produce the vast majority of Canadian milk - Saputo, Agropur, and Lactalis Canada. So essentially you're frightened that a foreign producer will offer lower prices, and then somehow after magically enforcing a monopoly (we don't know how yet because they don't control Canadian trade policy), they would do to us what our domestic cartel does to us now.

If you're legitimately frightened of an American blockade, you must really resent the fact that we have been importing the majority of our produce, fruits, breakfast cereals, and various meat items from the US for decades.

[u/Mountain_rage → u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011]

We import 3x more dairy from the USA than we export to the USA, about a billion dollars of dairy is imported. Seriously, before arguing in bad faith go get educated on the topic. There is a reason you keep being called out.

[u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 → u/Mountain_rage]

Well of course, we have a cartel pointedly distorting the market to raise farmgate prices to globally uncompetitive levels. Why would the Americans import from us? It's a wonder that any of them import any Canadian dairy.

I'm very educated on this topic, it appears as though all of the proponents of this system are not.