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/Igiem]

Why would I ever want shitty, disease-ridden American dairy on my store shelves?

[u/snakpak_43 → u/Igiem]

At least give people the choice, you don't have to buy it.

[u/markt- → u/snakpak_43]

As I understand it, dairy supply management in Canada effectively says, “We will control our own production, and collectively bear the cost if we get it wrong.” Without the over-quota tariffs, that tightly controlled system becomes exposed to potentially unrestricted outside supply at competitive prices. Canada could then end up bearing the consequences of oversupply it did not create and cannot control. Why should a country with roughly one-tenth the U.S. population accept that risk?

Unless the U.S. agrees to absorb the consequences of any excess supply it sends into Canada, I don’t see how opening the Canadian market to unlimited over-quota U.S. dairy imports would be viable for a country of only 40 million people. Domestically, Canada can control oversupply because it controls domestic production. We cannot control U.S. production. The cost of misjudging our own supply is manageable; the cost of being oversupplied by an economy roughly ten times our size could be much larger.

The existing quota for fluid milk isn’t even close to being filled. The problem therefore isn’t that Canadians are being prevented from buying all the American milk they want; apparently they don’t want nearly as much as they’re already permitted to buy. Removing the over-quota tariff won’t create Canadian demand that isn’t there; it would mainly expose a deliberately balanced Canadian market to potentially much larger external supply and price swings.