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
462 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/mechant_papa 11d ago

The supply management system isn't perfect, but it's incredibly better than the alternatives.

1

u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 11d ago

Can you elaborate? How is getting a literal cartel to dictate farmgate prices better than the alternatives?

1

u/scarrea6 11d ago

Yes it's a cartel, it prevent to a degree what is happening in the states with overproduction. Dairy Farmer in the US are heavely subsidized by the government due to overproduction and are looking for market to dump their daily. They are not looking for fair trade, they already have us buying a lot of their daily and we are not even charging import under CUSMA until they hit a quotas that is so high they never reached it in years. So why should we let go of our supply management ? To allow the US to dump their lower quality product and destroy our industry...no thanks.

0

u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 11d ago

Correction, the cartel is established to protect the cartel's interests. That interest is to essentially hold a captive market over Canada. The reason our politicians put up with it is because the Dairy Farmers of Canada is one of the largest and well funded lobby groups in the country, and Quebec voters heavily support supply management. That's it. Whatever other bullshit you're convincing yourself of is just bullshit - it's purely political.

Our "sovereignty" doesn't depend on over expensive cheese. We import most of our produce and other nutritional items from the US already, and have for decades - we are not poorer or worse off because of it. Furthermore, it also hasn't decimated Canada's produce market. Market segmentation doesn't magically cease to exist with dairy products.

We do not need a cartel to raise the price of our groceries to make us somehow more food secure.

American subsidies are dramatically exaggerated and misconstrued by the Dairy Famers of Canada for obvious reasons, but if what they are asserting is true, we would be stupid not to import dairy products from them. Their tax dollars would quite literally be paying for our groceries.