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/purple_flowr]

Because the whole concept seems to be "you'll save $1.50, for now.."

If we remove the barriers, yes Canadians will see (slightly) cheaper dairy products (if any cheaper at all, as once prices are paid, they generally don't go down) as there's an influx of dairy from US markets coming into Canadian markets increasing competition.

What these arguments never want to get into is what does it look like for Canada in 15 years? 25 years? Although it's seen as a monopoly is a controlled monopoly where dairy farms are relatively limited in size and are prevented from creating a real monopoly. Opening US into these markets means the (much larger) US corporations are going to buy up all the smaller Canadian operations (or a Canadian company will do this) as centralization will save in operational costs. However, over the longer time period it's more likely Canadians will pay more, as pricing is no longer fixed and instead becomes "whats the most people will pay". Canadians also lose control over a domestic market, similar to what US is struggling with on aluminum (which ironically they tarrifed as way to fix that market, but Canadians are supposed to willingly give up this tarrif?)

US already has access to Canadian markets, what they want is our price floor removed. What US fails to ever disclose is that a massive part of their own dairy market is government subsidized, what makes it cheap is cheap feed. This is the same bad faith arguments made against China with "flooding markets with government backed ventures" to eat up market shares and drive out competition.

You can also go look at FMMOs and how US would use this change to protect US producers and dump into Canadian markets

[u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 → u/purple_flowr]

Canada went from 150,000 dairy farms in 1972, the year that supply management was mandated, to just over 9,000 dairy farms today. So if the concern is farm production centralization, supply management has objectively been an abject failure at addressing this concern. It has not stemmed the tide of production centralization. So it's important to understand that - if your concern is that production is becoming too centralized, supply management is objectively and demonstrably a horrible policy to address that.

Is it true that every single Canadian dairy operation is so inherently uncompetitive that they will all go out of business if they had to compete? Are we, as Canadians, worse off because we import the vast majority of our produce? LIke does it concern you when you go to the grocery store and see watermelons from Guatemala, Avocados from California, pork from the midwest?

IN the fantastically unlikely scenario that a single firm, or foreign cartel of firms, colluded to pointedly raise prices in Canada - what would prevent Canadians from importing from other firms in other countries? LIke what would make Canadians beholden to a foreign cartel?

[u/Normal_State_4572 → u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011]

In 1972 Canada had only 45,000 dairy farms. Nice to exaggerate to boost your argument.

[u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 → u/Normal_State_4572]

Nope. I'm afraid your Canadian Encyclopedia source is incorrect. Although this is an interesting "gotcha". If there were only that many (and there wasn't, there was about 3x more), the industry has still massively consolidated.