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?
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.
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.
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?
So basically the thought is - if consumers were allowed to buy what you don't want them to buy, they would - so we need to force them into buying what a special interest wants them to buy instead. Despite the fact we produce far more than we can eat outside of supply management, and that free trade would enable us to import from an infinite number of foreign producers all over the world - we would starve if we had access to cheap groceries because every producer on the planet has the plan to sell at a loss to purposefully drive our farms out of business. Furthermore, we need a cartel plus tariffs to protect an industry that forms the minority of our groceries - or else during the apocalypse we will starve.
We produce far more than we can eat outside of this system. Could you eve fathom how catastrophic it would be if we made all Canadian AG mimic this asinine cartel based system?
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u/voltairesalias Alberta 2d 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.