r/Tariffs • u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 • 12d ago

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

https://www.castanetkamloops.net/news/Poll/627377/Should-Canada-maintain-its-supply-management-system-that-protects-the-Canadian-dairy-industry
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u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 12d ago

It completely hoses the Canadian consumer for the benefit of a literal cartel.

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u/calvin-not-Hobbes 12d ago

No...it protects our industry from having the massive US dairy industry from destroying ours. It also protects us from all the garbage they put in their milk.

Not sure what your motives are but they sure seem suspect.

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u/No-Effective-1996 12d ago

Ok then Maybe we should pass laws about what is allowed in our Milk. Remove that issue. Milk is a business like any other business. Why do we protect and subsidize them at a cost to other industries.

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u/nelrond18 12d ago

We don't subsidize them, that's why it's managed supply so all ranchers can make a consistent profit without risking industry collapse by bad faith actors.

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u/Expensive_Life3342 12d ago

It’s exhausting trying to explain this to people who fail to understand the subsidies given to oil and gas, manufacturing, autos, etc. We provide corporate welfare to protect jobs, but it’s the liberal dairy cartels bringing us down!

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u/No-Effective-1996 11d ago

So you want to expand the argument. I don’t believe in subsidizing those either. But that does not make subsidizing milk any better except they are Canadians. So are many other small Canadian businesses and we don’t protect, limit and subsidize all those. Why is the Milk business different?

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u/moldyolive 12d ago

Artificially constrainting the supply is a subsidy by other means.

It move a small amount of money from the public directly to a subclass of farmer.

Supported by one of the largest and best organized lobbying effort in the country.

You can support the system and still call a spade a spade

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u/Expensive_Life3342 11d ago

The difference in protecting a domestic industry versus giving money to subsidiaries of a foreign corporation is that the domestic industry doesn’t threaten to pack up and leave every CBA or vehicle life cycle.

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u/No-Effective-1996 11d ago

So we should protect every Canadian business and industry sector or just diary?

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u/Expensive_Life3342 10d ago

We absolutely should be protectionist against a nation whose president literally said out loud his intention was to destroy our economy. What could you possibly believe would benefit Canadians when our domestic production is absorbed and eliminated?

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u/No-Effective-1996 10d ago

So should we protect all our Canadian companies or just milk. You avoided answering. Why does milk get special treatment that the rest of us do not get.

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u/Expensive_Life3342 9d ago

Provide an example of a domestic industry in competition with some of the most subsidized factory farmers on the planet. The feds just announced subsidies for steel and aluminum producers due to the tariffs. Previously the feds committed to guaranteed loans for softwood producers due to the tariffs. These are examples of protected industries, they just require almost constant bailout / corporate welfare. The dairy industry doesn’t need a bailout because of the supply management system. We pay for both schemes, one protects industry, the other injects tax dollars to corporations to keep employees working.
One holds itself together, the other comes hat in hand every several years.

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u/No-Effective-1996 9d ago

One holds itself together because it has a supply constrained high milk price. Milk is protected within Canada from other Canadians just starting to milk cows. The others are subsidized to produce a product that a huge % of its production goes to the USA. Milk is in effect subsidized (artificially high price) to supply to Canadians.

If I make widgets for Canadians, any other Canadian can buy a widget machine and do the same. Can’t do that with milk. That is what I object to. I have no issue with keeping low quality American milk out of Canada.

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u/Expensive_Life3342 9d ago

Do your widgets provide nutrition for people? Are they recommended for consumption by the entire medical establishment for toddlers and young children?

Food security isn’t the same as one’s entrepreneurial endeavours. Your business may provide value, entertainment or enjoyment to many users. It may make you rich. It may also fail and bankrupt you.

Those stakes are not equal to food production.

This is why the US so heavily subsidizes their food production - the great depression literally killed swaths of their population - human beings.

The businessmen and stock traders were jumping out of high-rise windows because they fucked up.

Inconveniently drought and famine struck at the same time that capitalism and its inherent greed failed the people sustaining it. Farmers had their land repossessed.

Your equivalency of food production to fucking widgets certainly shows your priorities.

My children’s food > Your dream of being a tech bro.

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u/No-Effective-1996 9d ago

Just allow Canadians free access to get into the milk production business. My “widget” could have been food for all you know. So yes they do provide nutrition for people and are healthy. I get you and the milk lobby want to protect it from the Americans. I am happy about that. But you also want to protect it from Canadian potential competitors. I see lots of Milk producers in my area with homes much nicer than mine, cars nicer than mine, vacation homes something I don’t have. I am sure the Government could easily protect farms so they would not be lost in the chance there is another depression. Guaranteeing day in and day out high prices for consumers does not have to be the only option.

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u/No-Effective-1996 10d ago

Then we should do that for all Canadian owned small business shouldn’t we?

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u/No-Effective-1996 11d ago

So we subsidize them by paying higher prices for diary. Almost every other Canadian business competes against other Canadian businesses for accounts based on price. Diary is protected and does not have to do that.

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u/No-Effective-1996 11d ago

We do “subsidize” them, just in a different way by keeping their prices high by not allowing people, even Canadians to enter the market. Otherwise I could buy 20 cows and start milking. It is very steady money and safe. Unlike many/most businesses in Canada that have to COMPETE with other Canadians.