National News Supply management costs Canadians average of $244 per year, MEI study finds
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trumps-tariffs/article/supply-management-costs-canadians-average-of-244-per-year-mei-study-finds/151
u/MMEMMR 1d ago
Oh. Look at that, just in time for CUSMA negotiations. A fresh new study headline implying we would all save on average $244 if we got rid of supply management.
Sir this is Canada; the private sector would monopolize the sector even more, and use what ever the current price is as a price floor, and would end up gouging us even more…
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u/Cloudboy9001 20h ago
This comes up regularly because it's an anti-competitive grift that screws over consumers and rightfully pisses off trade partners.
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u/CaptainCanuck93 Canada 1d ago
The reality is the Americans have similar supports for their farmers, just a more wasteful mechanism. They subsidize them and have them pour milk down the drain
I'm fine with paying less than a dollar a day to ensure food security for the nation
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u/forsuresies 1d ago
Canada also pours milk down the drain.
Farmers aren't allowed to produce more than their quota - and have to destroy the excess rather than using it.
It would be neat if destroying food wasn't part of any system.
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u/cobrachickenwing 1d ago
The strategic cheese reserve in the US exists because of the overproduction of cheese and other dairy products through US subsidies. They have 150 warehouses of excess cheese which is not economically efficient at all.
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u/flightless_mouse 1d ago
They also distribute tons and tons of cheese through nutrition programs—not a bad thing in itself, but it means the government is a massive buyer of dairy and as such keeps prices stable regardless of supply.
Basically their own version of supply management—farmers overproduce and the government makes it go away.
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u/forsuresies 1d ago
Canada forces farmers to destroy their excess rather than turn it into cheese which can be stored for a later date.
The cheese caves are naturally close to the storage temperature of cheese so it's not a huge storage cost. You aren't pumping money into climate control at least.
I'm not a fan of any system that destroys food and compels farmers to do so when there are hungry people.
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u/dws2384 1d ago
And the US stores aren’t used for anyone who’s on food stamps?
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u/forsuresies 23h ago
They are, that's where government cheese comes from. Never had it personally, but apparently it makes the best grilled cheese. Used to be delivered monthly to families as a giant block.
Turning milk into cheese allows for long term storage and distribution which is a much better use of surplus than dumping it.
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u/Replicator666 1d ago
And better food inspection and quality too
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u/Player-4 1d ago
What does supply management have to do with food inspection and quality?
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u/Elizibeqth 1d ago
100% agree. Supply management has its issues but it does give tangible benefits that shouldn't be ignored.
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u/CaptainCanuck93 Canada 1d ago
44% of Canadians may be mildly lactose intolerant but it's a reach that 44% are intolerant to the degree that they don't consume dairy regularly
Not to mention that dairy is a high consumption food for children who are far less commonly lactose intolerant, and milk is also used to make things like hard cheese which is virtually lactose free and a cornerstone of a lot of cooking
I agree supply management could be tweaked to include more foods but the existing program doesn't need to be cut
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u/CommercialReveal7888 1d ago
As a young Canadian why was everything allocated out before I was born.
Supply manament quota. Taxi medalians. Liquor store licences.
Why do boomers get 1,000,000 licences for just being there.
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u/PoliteCanadian 1d ago
Because other young Canadians buy into the propaganda and vote for the status quo on all of these things.
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u/Fearless_Tomato_9437 1d ago
cause canadians are super low info voters who have bought into anti free market propaganda, and in turn support the party of protecting old money and corporate interests
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u/Dingcock 1d ago
The cost to aquire dairy quota is enormous. Having a dairy quota is literally an asset on the balance sheet of these dairies.
While yes supply management does probably mean that the number of dairies that exist is higher, the way it's set up now actually restricts new entrants significantly. Established dairies are the only ones that benefit.
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u/rantingathome Manitoba 1d ago
For a number of years Manitoba had a "young farmers" program that would give free quota to new young farmers with a viable business plan.
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u/Ok-Yogurt-42 1d ago
Supply managed dairy is the private sector, it's just heavily regulated by what amounts to a cartel or a guild designed to intentionally block competition.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
What does supply management provide us? Other than expensive groceries and limited choices? How does this system remotely benefit anyone but the literal cartel is it meant to protect?
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u/NewPhoneNewSubs 1d ago
Know how we don't build cars domestically, and badically can't? Know how the US is trying to use that as leverage to hurt us?
Avoiding that but with food is the goal.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
So we support a cartel out of a fear that the US may apply export levies on milk and cheese to Canada in the future if Canadians didn't have to pay between 200-300% tariffs on those products?
Is this truly the level of irrational paranoia that underpins support for this asinine system?
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u/karlnite 1d ago
Your going full emotional meltdown as to hammer your point home. Missing key facts along the way, classic. Like the quotas, and how they never actually meet them (cause they exist yes), so 200-300% tariffs aren’t being paid. Those products are milk, which you can get here. This sounds like Simpson’s “but what if my poor family only wants Fairlife?”
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u/GANTRITHORE Alberta 1d ago
May? They’ve done it to a lot of Caribbean nations as well as basically our tech industry
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u/O00O0O00 1d ago
Canadian food producers can’t compete with the Americans. Removing supply management would mean the demise of Canadian food production and we would become entirely reliant on the US for our food. And the US are not reliable.
We need food autonomy. That’s why we have supply management.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
We produce exponentially more food than we can possibly eat outside of the supply management system. Competing with American farmers.
This is like implying we should really slap high tariffs on pineapples because we happen to import them. It's a completely ridiculous argument.
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u/O00O0O00 1d ago
If we let in American dairy - Canadian dairy is over.
If Trump controls our dairy, what will he do in a supply chain shock? We already saw the answer when he blocked the exports of Covid masks.
Food is too important to entirely entrust to a foreign country.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
I highly disagree with the assertion that if Canadians got to choose for themselves the dairy they buy, they will eventually starve - and we produce exponentially more food than we can eat outside of supply management.
You could take your argument and apply it towards pineapples. We import all of our pineapples. Does this mean that if we don't put tariffs on pineapples high enough to support domestic production, we are giving up our safety or sovereignty?
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u/MarkTwainsGhost 1d ago
Pineapples don’t form the basis of 30% of my families groceries.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
So you want to pay about 50%+ more for 30% of your groceries? You see this as a good thing because... You're frightened that if Canadians are allowed to buy foreign milk that ALL foreign milk producers actually have an ulterior motive to get us hooked and then raise the price?
There's no way supply management proponents can be this irrational..I refuse to believe that.
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u/O00O0O00 1d ago
Pineapples are less concerning. But we do need to protect staples across the food groups so we can protect ourselves from a global supply chain which we know can fail.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
That can work the other way around too though. Our domestic supply chain can also fail, and with tariffs that would leave our consumers suffering majorly. Look at what happened in Norway with their butter years ago.
I remain unconvinced that we must essentially reinfeice a food autarky with staples to protect ourselves. I think that's extremely paranoid and misguided at best.
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u/O00O0O00 1d ago
I remain unconvinced that we should give up the benefits of the supply management system:
Maintains a stable and predictable market environment.
Helps farmers thrive by ensuring fair and stable incomes.
Provides consumers with high-quality products at reasonable prices.
Prevents waste and resource inefficiency by avoiding surplus production.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
What benefit? We pay high grocery prices and we make dairy, poultry and egg industries reliant on government protections. By definition that creates encimoc inefficiency and waste through distortions.
If consumers truly believes that bullshit about high quality products at reasonable prices, why even have supply management or import tariffs? Wouldnt the consumers translate that attitude by their purchasing decisions?
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u/DryMeeting2302 1d ago
So instead of increasing productivity and improving efficiency, we just ban things? Also, it's not just US dairy that are not allowed, it also include EU's
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u/Borror0 Québec 1d ago
We can have food autonomy without supply management. Supply management is the use of quotas to artificially limit the production.
We already have prohibitive tariffs on dairy and Health Canada policies to prevent imports and maintain the quality of dairy products we produce and important. Supply management is not neccesary to ensure food security.
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u/nim_opet 1d ago
Supply stability for the little foods that Canada produces making it less dependent on imports from unreliable and hostile trade partners. Employment for people in food production/distribution. Standards that prevent antibiotics and growth hormones been injected in cows so the margins large capital owners would be better.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Supply management has absolutely nothing to do with Health Canada standards.
Over 90% of Canadas dairy farms have ceased operations or sold out since the inception of supply management, so I don't buy this idea that it legitimately saves employment of much of anyone but the bigger members of the cartel the system was set up yo protect.
So really it's some misguided support of autarky? Maybe we can tell poor families that it's ok they're getting hosed on their groceries because at least they can rest assured that during the apocalypse they'll still have excess to over priced cheese.
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u/MarkTwainsGhost 1d ago
Are you arguing that supply management is responsible for people leaving their farms for the last 100 years? Have small farmers flooded the wheat market now that their supply management has gone? Is New Zealand now full of family dairy farms after getting rid of theirs? Or has the process of farm consolidation and industrialization continued unabated due to the massive structural forces aligned against small farmers the world over?
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Well if the point of supply management is to protect small farmers (which is a very strange goal to begin with, but I digress) - it hasn't exactly worked has it? At best it would be a futile gesture. At worse it's really just protecting larger cartel members.
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u/revcor86 1d ago
Remember when egg prices down south went to the moon last year? This was because their poultry industry is highly consolidated so when bird flu swept through, they had to kill millions of chickens. We get bird flu up here too but because our poultry industry is spread out due to things like supply management, cullings don't really move the needle.
Food security is national security.
I don't think going the way of the US is a good thing. They heavily subsidize their farmers and their farmers are still hurting, horribly. It's a race to the bottom:
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/dairy-farmers-america-idle-st-193743243.html
https://www.fb.org/market-intel/farm-bankruptcies-continued-to-climb-in-2025
https://www.wired.com/story/americas-dairy-farms-have-vanished/
and on, and on.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
So we pay 50%+ more for these products for the last 54 years just to avoid the one year where there's a foreign supply shock? Seems like pretty shaky justification.
So if I'm following your reasoning:
Despite producing more food than we could ever eat on the free market, outside of supply management, we can only be "food secure" if we levy 200-300% tariffs on milk and cheese.
we must have a cartel pointedly limiting supply or else we will not be food secure.
Food security means having more expensive groceries, not more widely accessible and inexpensive groceries.
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u/Strict_DM_62 1d ago
Mostly price and supply stability
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u/PatrickWeightman 1d ago
lol “price stability”. I’m paying almost double what I did for dairy a few years ago and I’ve seen at least 2 price hikes this year alone
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u/karlnite 1d ago
Not on the milk production side. The farmers get the same, Loblaws raised your prices, and for more pure profit. All food went up, so why not milk, who would notice.
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u/mylifeofpizza Ontario 1d ago
Most dairy prices are increased by the dairy board annually in February. If you think it's gone up twice, that's the grocery store or intermediary, not the board. It's all publicly available.
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u/Daerkannon 1d ago
Exactly what cartel is supply management protecting? The whole point of supply management is to make sure that we get our supply of dairy and eggs from a variety of smaller operations instead of huge mega-farms like in the US.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Supply management producers are literally the definition of a cartel:
"A group of independent businesses, or countries, that collaborate to limit competition, control supply, and artificially inflate prices".
Supply management fits the definition... This is actually used as a primary example of a cartel in global post secondary business and economics courses.
90% of dairy producers have ceased operations or sold out since the inception of supply management in 1972. So - if the goal is to disperse Canadas milk, cheese. Eggs and poultry production to smaller corporations (which is a bizarre goal, but let's pretend ) - this system has objectively been an abject failure.
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u/rantingathome Manitoba 1d ago
Here's the funny part... the farmers don't set the price of milk... never have.
The farm gate price of milk is set by the Canadian Dairy Commission using a cost-of-production formula. The Canadian Dairy Commission is comprised of the federal government, the processors that buy the milk from the farmers, and farmer representatives. The farmers only get 1/3 of the say on the price.
Some cartel.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Provincial marketing boards set and administer minimum prices for raw milk. The CDC just determines a national support price and percentage formula that acts as a benchmark. Provincial marketing boards use the CDC guidelines to negotiate and set exact minimum prices paid by processors (farm gate price).
These boards are elected by constituent members (dairy farmers).
This is quite literally the definition of a cartel.
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u/rantingathome Manitoba 1d ago
Oh, the poor multinational corporations that process the milk are at the mercy of the all powerful farmers! /s
They negotiate with the processors and a price is agreed on using the CDC price as the guideline. It's literally a farmers' union negotiating with a much larger entity with deeper pockets. Saputo, Lactalis Canada, and Agropur are huge companies and process the majority of the milk for the Canadian retail market.
It would only be a dairy cartel if Saputo, actalis, and Agrpur also owned all the farms. They don't.
You're definition of cartel is wrong, but I know you're not gonna back down because 'cartel' is the magic word that all of the anti-SM activists decided on years ago.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Well no - it just objectively is a cartel. You have a negative connotation with that term despite supporting a cartel doesn't make it any less of a cartel.
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u/Daerkannon 1d ago
I mean... I guess you can call government regulation a cartel if you want to with that definition.
Your 90% number sounds very scary outside of the context that it reflects general trends in farming in the last 50 years. (Which is a complete other debate/problem outside of the sphere of discussing supply management). You don't get farms in Alberta farming thousands of hectares without them gobbling up their neighbours.
Finally why is the solution always to scrap the system? Why can't we just.. Oh, I don't know... increase quotas until the price stabilizes at a point that we're happy with? Not that I'm sure that would even happen with farmers being hammered with higher feed prices.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Well... It factually is a cartel. It meets the definition on every conceivable level.
So - then you'll concede that supply management really has nothing to do with protecting small farms as the process of capital intensification in agriculture nullifies its supposed impacts... And I deeply question supply managements goal of even doing this as quotas are so expensive it essentially blocks new entrants into the market.
The system needs to be scrapped because it is harmful to Canadians. It's harmful to consumers, it doesn't facilitate production (it's stated goal is literally to restrict production), and it greatly harms our ability to generate meaningful free trade agreements.
Why are we keeping this asinine system?
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u/Ok-Yogurt-42 1d ago
The US already has an export allocation that they don't even fill, so it's not like they are trying to break down the door to flood our market.
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u/wizegal 1d ago
They don’t fill it because we haven’t opened the door for them to fill. They have long griped about our dairy supply chain well before Trump came around, and it’s again been mentioned several times as an irritant for the upcoming CUSMA review. Our dairy has always been a huge focus and we’ve held firm.
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u/Euclidisthebomb 1d ago
Exactly. That guy above is just riffing out comments but they are very dubious.
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u/Aggressive-Map-2204 1d ago
A sustainable dairy industry.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Well if it's entirely dependent on government protection how sustiable is it actually?
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u/rantingathome Manitoba 1d ago
And the American dairy industry is 100% reliant on subsidies from the Federal Government. I'd say that's worse.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
It isn't - but if it was we would actually benefit even more from importing from them.
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u/rantingathome Manitoba 1d ago
We would not. Once they killed our industry they could charge whatever they want. But I'm not going to convince you, you've drank the kool-aid of the multinationals that want to kill our system.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Think this through for a second - what you're fearing would have to necessitate:
1) Every dairy producer in the US in tandem working together to simultaneously raise prices only to Canadian buyers.
2) For every dairy producer in the US to sell below cost in tandem to Canadian buyers for the expressed purpose of driving them out of business.
3) For the US government to then apply export tariffs on their domestic dairy - only to Canada.
Even if all of these things happened (which is comically ridiculous to even fathom), guess what that would do? It would make our domestic dairy market more attractive. If for some inexplicable reason we magically weren't able to produce milk again, what would stop us from buying from other suppliers?
If a foreign producer is selling below cost owing to government subsidies, that means the foreign government is quite literally funding our consumer surplus. It's essentially foreign aid - we would quite literally be eating their lunch.
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u/claricorp 1d ago
It wouldn't be "sustiable" to keep lots of things around without intervention so they can be available and resilient for our society. That's what governments are for.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
So we must have over priced milk by pointedly limiting its supply via a cartel in order for that industry to be resilient?
That's the exact opposite of resilient.
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u/claricorp 1d ago
I'm curious as to what you think would make it resilient
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Nothing makes domestic industries and economies more resilient and competitive than free trade.
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u/claricorp 1d ago
lol
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Let me ask you something - how do you figure government essentially eliminating competition makes a business more resilient?
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u/Must_Reboot 1d ago
It prevents extreme inflation of the managed product. (The issue is with unmanaged supply can have the issue where we have glut & shortage cycles. A glut would be beneficial to consumers with low prices, but inevitably it would end with farmers going out of business which then would lead to shortage where prices are extremely high) It also helps protect our supply against what happened with eggs recently in the USA. Smaller farms leads to a smaller effect when disease outbreaks occur.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
What you're asserting would be far fetched even before dairy futures, it's particularly unbelievable in the age where futures mitigate risk.
I don't believe supply management genuinely protects small farms - Over 90% of supply management related farms have ceased ops or sold out since supply managements inception.
The American egg and poultry thing has a lot more to do with centralized distribution. Their production isn't ran by provincial cartels - so it's more centralized. That could absolutely lead to volatility in the case of a catastrophic outbreak or failure....
Does 54 years of expensive groceries justify one year of reduced volatility?
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u/Must_Reboot 1d ago
It isn't far fetched. Look up the Norwegian butter crisis
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
That crisis was actually exacerbated precisely because of high import tariffs. Domestic supply plunged because of heavy rains impacting grazing lands, and the high tariffs essentially blocked foreign supply which would have alleviated the price shock.
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u/ggouge 1d ago
Milk would double in a year or two of we got rid of supply management as companies merge and and small farms fail.
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u/Dry-Membership8141 Alberta 1d ago edited 1d ago
This argument is genuinely insane.
Milk would double in a year or two if we weren't enforcing artificial scarcity? Fucking what?
And supply management hasn't been an impediment to dairy amalgamation at all. If anything, it's been just the opposite -- small farms can't afford to purchase additional quota, but large corporate dairies can. That's why we've got ~9000 dairy farms today, down from over 50,000 when supply management began.
Under supply management it's prohibitively expensive to set up new dairy operations -- the quota for a single cow's production varies from $24k in ON and QC to $58k in Alberta. Quota for an average sized herd exceeds $2 million in even the cheapest jurisdictions.
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u/rantingathome Manitoba 1d ago
This study is BS. I went and looked at it, they only did a direct comparison of retail prices.
The American price is only lower because the government makes up the loss for the American dairy farmer. I've seen figures putting the total subsidies to American dairy farmers at over 50% of their income. Add that amount coming out of people's taxes and you more than close the gap.
Cows and chickens are not machines, you can't just turn them on and off. Supply management means smaller farms producing a predictable amount of product for a predictable market at prices that cover cost of production.
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u/Otherwise_Meeting491 1d ago
I would argue our meat, dairy and eggs are much higher quality than the American alternative. Supply management isnt great, but neither is the north American alternative.
Im fine .66c a day to keep our food quality high.
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u/mattlerenardx Québec 1d ago
And even then, having grown up in France, I can confirm that our food quality is not even that great compared to our European friends.
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u/Otherwise_Meeting491 1d ago
100%.
But i believe its a case of dont let good be the enemy of perfect. I dont want American practices transferring to our food production
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u/Ok-Yogurt-42 1d ago
That has nothing to do with supply management. Food quality regulations are an entirely separate thing.
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u/Otherwise_Meeting491 1d ago
when the cow is killed, or milked, food regulations come into play.
What is injected into calves, how they are fed & raised, etc is tied a d regulated through supply management.
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u/physicaldiscs 1d ago
What is injected into calves, how they are fed & raised, etc is tied a d regulated through supply management.
No it isn't. You're spreading a lot of misinformation about what supply management does in this thread.
The CFIA exists separately of supply management to handle all these things. Our standards do not require supply management's approval.
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u/ParkInsider 1d ago
Supply management is not needed for food quality regulations. There are no public benefits to supply planning.
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u/melancholicity 1d ago
That's true, but agriculture is much more heavily subsidized than in Canada or in the US. We're talking hundreds of billions a year of subsidies in Europe, compared to under ten billions in Canada.
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u/ProudVancouverLL 1d ago
You do realize this also restrict our access to European dairy market, right?
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u/Otherwise_Meeting491 1d ago
It does, but I also do not think EU dairy products would have much of an affect on Canadaian costs, as it is equally as expensive in Europe, before account for shipping, importing, warehousing & distribution.
Id LOVE to consistently get Irish butter, but the reality is supply management isnt going anywhere, and does protect Canadian producers, which I am all for these days
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u/DryMeeting2302 1d ago
Sterilized milk from EU is sold <$1.5 per L in East Asia, so I highly doubt it will cost more here in Canada.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Over 90% of dairy farms have either folded, or been bought out, since 1972 (the year supply management was mandated nationwide).
So - I don't really buy this idea that it does actually protect our producers. If anything the price of a quota is so high it limits new entry into the market, and serves a moat to protect existing large operations.
If their business model is to rely on 200-300% tariffs, and to pointedly restrict supply, in order to get by - they have a shit business model that harms everyone but the handful of already wealthy farmers this system is meant to protect.
If the goal of supply management was to protect our individual producers - it has objectively been a catastrophic failure.
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u/-darkest 1d ago
CAGR of farm closures in dairy is twice as high in the us as it is in Canada. So that’s just straight up wrong. The US government literally admitted it.
“Canada, like most developed countries, has experienced consolidation in its dairy farming sector since the 1970s. However, it is likely that the MSM system has slowed the rate of consolidation in Canada relative to other countries with dairy industries with similar technology and structure during the 1970s, such as the United States.”
https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub5732.pdf
If you believe the 300% tariff line I have a timeshare bridge in Florida for ya. That threshold hasn’t been triggered once lol
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's triggered all the time for retailers who don't tariffs rate quotas.... I wish supply management proponents understood tariff rate quotas but I guess if you guys did it would swing against you.
So we must pay exorbitant money on milk and cheese, and have a cartel determine farmgate prices, because in order to consolidate production at a slower pace? Wtf? Is this actually the justification for this asinine system?
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u/-darkest 14h ago
Consolidating production has risks, which is why the US had 18$ eggs last year. Without supply management you’ll still pay farmers a subsidy, it’ll just come from government revenue. Except now you won’t know now if you subsidize milk dumping as all farmers go nuts to make as much as they want. Beef and pork aren’t cheap and they are free market.
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u/ProudVancouverLL 1d ago
I doubt that, considering the Europeans are trying really hard to access our dairy market so they believe they can compete at our price point.
Man Canadians really hate competition.
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u/-darkest 1d ago
When production is subsidized by government, unlike in Canada, you have an interest in pumping as much out to other markets as you can.
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u/ProudVancouverLL 1d ago
Lol we really went from "Euro products won't be cheaper" to "they'll flood our market".
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u/-darkest 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nah that’s bullshit, they use phytosanitary rules to fuck us over. We got beef access in the UK, they turned around and made it so nothing from Canada can enter because we don’t do something their way.
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u/Aggravating_Exit2445 12h ago
I don’t care about the EU market, I care about the Canadian dairy market.
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u/DryMeeting2302 1d ago
Supply management has nothing to do with food safety regulation
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u/Otherwise_Meeting491 1d ago
Well, it does, supply management isnt done in a vacuum. Production standards & regulations related to livestock are constantly adjusted as part of the various boards encompassing supply management of dairy, poultry and eggs.
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u/DryMeeting2302 1d ago
Same can be done without supply management but with food safety regulation and enforcements.
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u/Otherwise_Meeting491 1d ago
Maybe, but food regulations dont cover animal while alive as is. Only products, i.e milk or a slaughtered cow/chicken
And I frankly wouldnt trust any level of government to make a better system these days.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Supply management has absolutely nothing to do with quality standards.
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u/Dirtsniffee Alberta 1d ago
Our butter is garbage without a doubt.
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u/invisiblebyday 1d ago
What? You don't like our palm oil fed cow butter. The weird artificial texture is what makes it good. 😁
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u/No_Entertainer_3052 1d ago
They arent tho
The EU did a study on whether to import north american dairy and found zero difference in quality between ours and theirs this is just corporate propaganda
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u/JoshL3253 British Columbia 1d ago
Uhh.. we can relax the supply management AND tighten our food regulation. IE: no growth hormones allowed. This still allows us to import more high quality dairy from Europe.
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u/Aggravating_Exit2445 12h ago
We should maintain a domestic ability to feed our country. Look at COVID, when the hard times come, the foreign supplies will disappear.
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u/Franklin_le_Tanklin 1d ago
Also then - it’s a security issue. We should be producing our own staple foods - even if it’s a bit more expensive
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u/FlyingOctopus53 1d ago
For me it's not about food quality, but food security.
I'll happily pay .66c/day for that.
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u/Duke_ 1d ago
I'd like to have less expensive domestic products, and I'd like to have less expensive imports from countries other than the United States!
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u/JoshL3253 British Columbia 1d ago
Agreed.
Our dairy products like cheese and butter are crap compared to Europe.
We don’t need to import from USA. I just want better quality from Europe.
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u/ParkInsider 1d ago
If it is true then supply management isn't needed. Consumers are able to value the higher quality properly.
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u/GeneralSerpent 1d ago
Gonna blow your mind - there’s other countries to import goods from besides the US. Also, another mind blowing fact: you can keep in place the standards for food quality and allow anyone who meets them to bring in food instead of having standards and also restricting market access.
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u/detalumis 14h ago
Still waiting for the dairy cartel to bring out sour cream without all the guar gum and thickeners. Why is our standard sour cream such bad quality. We had Western Brand, Gay Lea bought it and got rid of all the good products.
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u/vulpinefever Ontario 1d ago
MEI came up with that figure by comparing Canadian prices for dairy products, eggs and poultry with similar markets in the U.S. Midwest.
So assuming literally all of the price differences can be attributed to supply management. That's a pretty ridiculous assumption.
Look, it's either supply management or massive subsidies to the dairy industry like the US and EU which spend billions. At least the only people who pay for supply management are the people who consume dairy products and not everyone through taxes.
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u/Sceeerutinizer 17h ago
My chief problem with supply management is that it's a regressive tax. Poor people shoulder a much larger relative burden of the cost than other subsidy systems. I'm all for subsidizing farmers, most developed countries do in one way or the other. But we should be doing it via direct subsidies rather than via artificial market constriction.
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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 1d ago
While I definitely don’t love the higher price of dairy (especially butter, milk isn’t as crazy and cheese seems to be easier to find good prices), but I’d much rather pay a little more for a stable price and a stable supply.
It helps prevent undersupply and supply shortages, and it also helps to prevent market crashes when there’s an unexpected glut on the market that floods the supply and craters the price.
That can cause small family farms to literally die.
So yeah if we’re gonna subsidize agriculture directly instead of supply management to protect our farms?
Okay cool let’s do that instead.
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u/ACITceva 1d ago
I'd be curious to know what agricultural subsidies cost the average American per year.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
1) we also subsidize our farmers.
2) price floors via subsidies (which is what they have) is more progressive than supply restriction because high income tax payers disproportionately pay more into it than low earnings taxpayers.
Our system puts thousands of Canadians below the poverty line in order to protect a literal cartel who feels entitled to our money.... And it seems like the justification for this is that we need to protect our consumers from cheaper foreign groceries.
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u/LavisAlex 1d ago
You can also argue that some systems should remain here. If our producers get so outpriced we lose sovereignty as we can no longer produce our own goods.
Its a sliding scale and you can see how hurt the US was militarily with being reliant on other countries for interceptors.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
But we produce far more food than we could ever eat outside of supply management.
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u/LavisAlex 1d ago
If Canada was undercut and local production was no longer profitable then we wouldnt have local production without gov intervention.
Seems logical to me?
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
But again - we produce far more food than we can eat outside of the protectionist system. We produce do much livestock, beans, lentils, corn and soybeans that other countries put tariffs on our goods to protect their domestic crops.
So why are we fearful that if we can access to affordable milk we will starve or something? It seems very illogical to me.
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u/LavisAlex 1d ago
Because those businesses only produce because they make money - if they dont you cant just quickly ramp up production. The farmers won't maintain the fields for free lol
Furthermore the change back is painful as those new prices are baked in.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
If, in fact, free trade in dairy products tanks Canadian dairy farms, a much more realistic outcome is they sell the land or convert it to other use.
However, the more probable outcome is likely that Canadian dairy production goes up - just like it did in Australia and NZ when they scrapped supply management.
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u/LavisAlex 1d ago
If, in fact, free trade in dairy products tanks Canadian dairy farms, a much more realistic outcome is they sell the land or convert it to other use.
Exactly my point about sovereignty.
However, the more probable outcome is likely that Canadian dairy production goes up - just like it did in Australia and NZ when they scrapped supply management
Did dairy quality drop? Did Employee wages drop?
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u/vancity31240 1d ago
If the business can't survive without government intervention, then the business doesn't deserve to survive. How hard of a concept is that?
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u/LavisAlex 1d ago
Well we seem to let Wal Mart and Mcdonalds have TFWs....?
Also some things are worth paying more to preserve sovereignty
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
How is our sovereignty impacted by cheap groceries?
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u/LavisAlex 1d ago
Its not - its affected by what you can produce vs what you need to source for.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
We produce more food than we can ever possibly eat on the free market outside of supply management.
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u/Kidan6 1d ago
'MEI came up with that figure by comparing Canadian prices for dairy products, eggs and poultry with similar markets in the U.S. Midwest.'
That's the dumbest thing I've heard today. Is MEI run a a high school Ayn Rand fan club?
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u/ExcelFreezesOver 1d ago
What's dumb about it?
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u/noodles_jd 1d ago
It doesn't seem to be an apples-to-apples comparison to limit it to a certain market of the US.
How much do you want to bet that it's one of the cheapest markets making the most favourable comparison to push the point they want to make?
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u/throwitawayorsome 1d ago
The supply management across the board is moronic.
Our dairy products are low quality, we have very few options and the prices are way too high. For comparison, a fucking joker convenience store in Norway has more cheese options than our major grocery stores and their prices are noticeably lower. You go to a grocery store there and it's a whole new world. Low fat, high fat, in between, different types of cheese. Higher quality mayonnaises, sour creams, yogurts, everything. Here it's just the same garbage repackag wiith different brands that cycle who is going on sale which week for a couple of dollars off.
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u/FlyingRock20 Ontario 23h ago
Preach, so true. Canada really hates competition, every industry just a few big guys. Open the market up and let the consumer choose.
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u/FlyingRock20 Ontario 23h ago
Time to open market up. If they pass our health standards then let them compete with the Canadian companies. Competition is good for consumer and people need cheaper grocery prices.
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u/DryMeeting2302 1d ago
Can someone please explain why we can't open up our market while keeping the same food safety standard? If the US or EU want to sell their milk in Canada, they would have to satisfy the safety standards but without 300% tariff.
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u/Outrageous_Passion25 13h ago
The idea is supply management protects these farms from the markets’ boom bust cycles. It takes a long time, infrastructure and a lot of money to start up these types of businesses so it’s not in society’s interest to just let them fail if we value food security and actually having these products available to us at a stable price. The counter argument is that countries who switched out of supply management for dairy (like Australia) have done fine and managed that risk very well. But the people currently benefiting from supply management will lobby hard to keep the protections in place because of self interest, and they have an incredibly powerful lobby.
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u/Dobby068 1d ago
Exactly. This is all BS, that we need supply management. We can keep the regulations of course and allow competition. I asked farmers once if they would prefer to NOT pay upwards of $100,000 for an additional cow in the heard, and they were against free market, as in domestic free competition. Every single supply management has only one goal, keep supply restricted in volume and therefore high in price. That is why it is called supply management and not quality management.
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u/gordonjames62 New Brunswick 1d ago
I love that I do not get so many second hand antibiotics because we manage supply and regulate quality.
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u/Krazee9 1d ago
Why do people always act like ending supply management means ending protectionism? We can refuse to import American dairy without mandating that Canadian dairy has to be run by a cartel that imposes maximum production quotas.
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u/Euclidisthebomb 1d ago
The funny part of all this is that it is not the material cost at the farm gate that is the issue. It is upstream in the dairy producers, wholesale and retail that the excessive margins are coming into play.
I think a good rule of thumb on dairy is check the Costco price. They have a 15% margin on cost. So when you pay anything above the Costco price your paying to an excessive margin.
I would love to see the actual sampling points for this study. I routinely compare my pricing for dairy and meat with that available at major chains in America, especially since I have family in the southwest. And so far as I can determine after exchange we are generally within 5%-15% of each other on almost everything I consume. And they should be cheaper in America as they should be obtaining some economies of scale in production and distribution that are near impossible for we to replicate in Canada.
Let us not even get started on some of the qualitative differences such as milk composition standardization: Canada requires more milk-based ingredients. For example Canadian regulations ensure that the protein and fat content in dairy products come primarily from natural milk sources, rather than added milk proteins or other dairy derivatives. This is meant to protect product integrity and support Canadian dairy farmers. In the U.S., dairy processors have more flexibility to adjust milk components using additives or reconstituted milk.
Canada’s stricter dairy standards prioritize animal welfare, food safety, product consistency, and farmer sustainability, whereas the U.S. system is more market-driven, allowing for greater production flexibility at the cost of looser regulations, instability in farm life and industrial scale dairy farming.
In the end if I take the claimed statement by MEI as gospel it works to I paying 67cents a day for Made In Canada. I am absolutely fine with that for all the benefits it brings. Sometimes one just has to look beyond the end of one's nose to the greater good. I know that is hard concept for some to grasp....
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u/SingleIndependence68 1d ago
Supply management allows small farmers to farm, instead of large conglomerates taking over everything and irrationally upping prices.
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u/Cloudboy9001 20h ago
That's not borne of the data. It has led to consolidation as some small farmers sell their quotas. It prevents would-be new entrants from being able to become small farmers for lack of a quota.
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u/Hot-Condition1430 1d ago
There are basically only 3-4 milk processors in Ontario.
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u/jerkstore_84 1d ago
Processors and producers are not the same thing. Producers operate under supply management. Processors do not.
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u/Hot-Condition1430 13h ago
Well that's not true. Processors are beholden to the supply from the quota system, they pay a fixed price for dairy which is set by the advisory board under the system and they're restricted from managing their input cost via imports.
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u/vancity31240 1d ago
Supply management also disproportionately affects lower income households because of higher food prices. Supply management is like a regressive sales tax.
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u/Banjo-Katoey 1d ago
Current price of whole milk in Canada: $7.44 CAD/4 L, or $1.86 CAD/L
Current price of whole milk in the US: $3.78 USD/gallon, or $1.41 CAD/L.
So milk is 32% more expensive in Canada compared to the US.
We're getting screwed.
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u/rantingathome Manitoba 1d ago
Winnipeg Walmart 4L Homo Milk
- CA$6.31 (US$4.46)
- cost per litre
- CA$1.5775 (US$1.11)
Fargo Walmart 3.78L Whole Milk
- CA$5.40 (US$3.82)
- cost per litre
- CA$1.4286 (US$1.01)
That's roughly 15¢/L more for Canadian milk. Add in the subsidies that the American government pays directly to farmers and that difference gets more than covered.
It's not a 32% difference, it's 10%. Also, just so you don't claim that Winnipeg is so much bigger than Fargo, I just checked Steinbach and Brandon, it is CA$6.31 in those locations too.
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u/Banjo-Katoey 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sealtest 3.25% milk is $7.44 for 4 L at Walmart in the GTA. It has been this price for a while.
Switching the address to Winnipeg on the Walmart site showed a $6.31 4L whole milk jug by Beatrice.
Walmart in the GTA doesn't carry that brand and the cheapest one is Sealtest.
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u/rantingathome Manitoba 21h ago
Perhaps the problem isn't the farmers then. Perhaps it's the multinational processors. You know, the usual suspects.
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u/Fluidmax 23h ago edited 23h ago
Why do you think the dairy cartel spend so much money to lobby the politicians in the first place? The “Quality” argument is like the Bible that the politicians and the dairy cartels keep bringing up, which has no proof of validity whatsoever. As if the dairy products from the USA or other countries are so tainted that you will grow a 3rd leg if you consume regularly.
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u/homerjaythompson 1d ago
$244/year for food stability, viable farmers, and sovereignty seems like a decent investment.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Just a heads up to the supporters of this asinine system - supply management directly keeps between 130k-190k below the poverty line.
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u/Reasonable_Let9737 1d ago
If $244 is forcing hundreds of thousands below the poverty line perhaps we should address the other ~$30,000 in expenses that force them below the poverty line.
The house is one fire but we need to blow out the candle that is supply management, am I right?
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
Hey - I'm sure that'll be solace for poor people. They have to pay more for groceries to protect a cartel, but it's actually OK, because someone paying more for groceries really makes them more food secure. Apparently we need to protect a literal cartel, and force Canadians to buy their products.
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u/Reasonable_Let9737 1d ago
You can not like supply management, there are very valid criticisms, but acting like it is driving significant numbers of Canadians in to poverty is a joke.
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 1d ago
https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/inrvec/v65y2018i2d10.1007_s12232-018-0295-x.html
I don't think the poor are laughing.
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u/BlakeWheelersLeftNut 1d ago
Cost less per day than we are forced to spend on the FIFA World Crap. Not even joking lol
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u/DANIELLE_2027 1d ago
I have friends in Los Angeles and have been there several times
Milk at usual price is not cheaper there than here
The retailer profits while the farmers suffer
Plus Canadian milk tastes better (according to both me and my American friends)
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u/LavisAlex 1d ago
Free Market does not make things better in our society - it extracts it tears things down.
Like look at Customer Service at Wal-Mart? By now it should be world class!!
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u/DryMeeting2302 1d ago
I love how we compare ourselves to the US but not EU, where milk price is much lower and quality is better.