42 Replies to “For the good of the consumer.”

  1. Funny how a handful of dairy farmers can hold the entire Canadian public at ransom.
    And neither Conservatives, Liberals, or NDP have the honesty to say what needs to be done, or the balls to do it. None of them.

  2. $300 to $400 per year extra is what the average family in Ontario hands over to the communists running the milk monopoly according to an article online a few months ago. And it goes on year after year. We get slick TV commercials for the money, and that’s it.

  3. It’s like the price of gasoline and diesel today. Why bother giving people a break when you have a monopoly and those that need it are forced to buy it ? When a milk quota is worth more than the farm and the herd, you will always see everything that’s wrong with government intervention in the free market. Skim milk cheese is the same price as whole milk cheese while they have a huge surplus of skim. That’s not free market or free enterprise. That’s campaign donations, lobbyists and back room cronyism that’s well established. The only difference is, they peddle it as market stability and people are dumb enough to buy that.

  4. Lucky for them, there is an easy solution. Just drop supply management. It’s interesting that the poorest people are essentially taxed on basic nutrients so dairy farmers, all who are millionaires, can get richer.
    I don’t know if it’s true but I heard someone say that turkey supply management in Alberta is for the benefit of 50 millionaires.

  6. The Conservative government got rid of the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly, so there is a precedent for action.

  7. Milk Marketing Board…nuf said.
    Think Wheat Board.
    If those farmer’s want their ‘quota’ (that they pay for at unreasonably high prices) they have to listen to ‘the boss’ (guvament).
    Our neighbour/farmer was doing that in the eighties….happy cows=lots of milk…too bad for the guy that works all day looking after the cows. He would have to pay a penalty for too much milk.

  9. This is what the dairy cartel does. Artificially inflating and keeping prices high. Dumping milk is nothing new. I was going to post secondary school in Ottawa in the late 70’s and at that time it was a well know fact the cartel was dumping milk into the river, in fact they weren’t even sneaky about it. It was a common occurrence.

  10. Everywhere else in the world, cheese is peasant food. In Canada it’s a luxury item. Good cheese in many times the price of good beef. You’d think that farmers had to kill their cattle to produce milk, with the price that we have to pay for it.

  11. bluetech;
    After my 30 year experience of selling to dairy farmers my observation is that if your dairy friends are not millionaires then they are poor operators or a very small
    operation. Being a millionaire dairy farmer is not necessarily a negative comment as
    their operations are generally very capital intensive. Supply management does take a
    lot of risk out of that equation. That is why bankers line up outside the milk parlor
    to lend money.
    There is certainly a case for limiting supply management. The #1 reason is that demographics no longer support the cost.

  12. Certainly the Kebec ones are, where the majority of the dairy monopoly is located.
    Surprised?

  13. Globe and Mail commenters railing against milk marketing boards; I’m a little confused, isn’t supply management usually a lefty thing?

  14. I’ve been tracking the daily price of oil, Canadian dollar vs gasoline prices out here in Alberta (Calgary area), since oil hit a low of $45 US back in January. I use COSTCO prices because that’s where I buy my gasoline. The prices are published daily and I use the Noon Fix CDN vs USD, the closing oil price and track gasoline prices daily from Gas Buddy.
    Price of oil is up about 33% since the low of 45 to now at 60 odd a barrel, but gasoline is up almost 60%, from a low of 68 to 107.9 today. The CDN dollar has traded in a range 77-83 for the period January to present. Not much movement there, especially lately. It’s trading pretty much flat vs USD. The price of oil has ranged 58-61 from the start of May to present. Gasoline held at 85.9-90.9 up until 19 May then it swung uphill quite dramatically to last week’s 109.9. It’s since leveled off to 107.9 today. Reason? Beats me. Nobody blew up a Texas refinery in the interim.
    You won’t hear a peep from our local & federal governments, because they make a killing on excise taxes, PST/HST. That includes City of Vancouver who adds a “transit tax” to the pump price. I’m not up on other Canadian cities that do the same. Vancouver is not big on pipelines, although their fuel is piped into Burrard Inlet from Fort Saskatchewan, AB. Other wise it would be “dirty” heavy US oil from offshore California.
    The US customer get’s a better price and frankly, we are making up the difference, with our own damned oil shipped to Texas at a discount.
    Meanwhile US interests pay to ensure that we don’t get a better price for our raw product by blocking pipelines to the west & east, using our own voters, local provincial governments, local native bands and foreign & Canadian “charitable” organizations.

  16. bluetech “i know a few dairy farmers…none of them are millionaires.”
    Where I live in Alberta, a couple quarters of land and a barn – $1 million. Let’s say small – 50 cows with quota – $1 million. Lets add on $200,000 for basic machinery.
    So a small farmer is worth $2.2 million. If he’s young he owes most of it to the bank but as he has a guaranteed profit he will one day own it all and probably much more. If you know a dairy farmer who isn’t a millionaire he needs to seriously question himself.

  17. The Wheat Board is now a grain company and no longer mandatory to belong to. It is time supply management was reigned in. If there is a surplus let the market take care of it. Goodbye supply management.

  18. $1 million isn’t much nowadays. Like $200,000 in the ’80s.
    Even less in the ’70s.
    They earn their pay. 24 hour job, 7 days a week. No holidays unless a good hand can be found to take care of things. Those are few and far between.
    Btw, farmers pay quite high education tax on land to school your kids. I don’t hear most people complaining about that facet of our communist system.

  19. Maybe not but we’re probably not talking about just $1 million. I wouldn’t disagree that there’s physical labour involved but how difficult would those positions be to fill?
    To pay off the start-up loan and have a few million in assets (plus income/savings) in 30 years is not an unenviable position to be in.

  21. NO THEY ARE NOT. The majority of us wanted the Wheat Board gone.
    ct @ 7:22, well said.
    stradivarious, I agree and well said. Dairy farmers, big or small, work hard every day.
    That said, all the marketing boards need to go. The prices for milk, cheese and other dairy products, as well as all poultry prices, are too high.

  22. To pay off the start-up loan and have a few million in assets (plus income/savings) in 30 years is not an unenviable position to be in.
    Whenever you feel led to assume that much risk, have at it. It’s only about $30,000 per cow. Plus the price of the cow. The average dairy is about 77 cows. That’s $2,310,000, plus buying the cows. Add feed, housing and machinery…that could easily double. Plus have enough business sense not to go broke while putting in better than a 100 hours a week getting the work done. Week in and week out for years.
    Oh, that start-up loan, where are you going to get the 25% down? Might be a few more than 30 years getting all that done…

  23. That said, all the marketing boards need to go. The prices for milk, cheese and other dairy products, as well as all poultry prices, are too high.
    You’d either have to close the border or persuade the US to remove their subsidies. Otherwise the US taxpayer would be subsidizing Canadian dairy purchases. With Canadian dairies not able to compete, how long do you think dairy products would remain cheap in a seller’s market?
    And it doesn’t just extend to the dairy subsidy. The corn used to feed the dairy cow is subsidized.
    Hard to have a free market in a subsidized world. Grain is different because we have some advantages we can exploit.

  24. “persuade the US to remove their subsidies”
    The US subsidies are mainly directed at less wealthy people through food stamps. In Canada the flow is reversed. The poor are squeezed to subsidize the dairy farmers.

  25. Every dairy farmer I know is worth more than $1.0 million, the quota alone is $30,000.00 per cow – that’s the collateral the banks want! I drink skim milk. Cows freshen naturally in Jan – Mar. You must regulate the barn lighting to get them to freshen “off-season”. That takes management! Every fall I pick up a 4 liter pack of milk and its either skim powder reconstituted, or its a pack that is first off the line and is full of cleaning solvent from the C.I.P. process. They don’t give a damn! Its a gov’t. protected monopoly.

  26. “Btw, farmers pay quite high education tax on land to school your kids. I don’t hear most people complaining about that facet of our communist system.”
    In Ontario, land that is used for agricultural purposes is taxed at 1/4 the rate of rural land that is not used for farming.

  27. The US subsidies are mainly directed at less wealthy people through food stamps.
    Yeah, let’s give more direct aid to the poor. Build it, and they will come…at least dairy farmers do something for what they get.
    Regardless, dairy farmers, and farmers in general, don’t owe city consumers cheap food. You want cheap dairy, go milk a cow.

  28. Every dairy farmer I know is worth more than $1.0 million, the quota alone is $30,000.00 per cow – that’s the collateral the banks want! I drink skim milk.
    Well, you head right into the bank and collect your $30,000 per cow…and they’ll ask you where your $7500 down payment is…heh
    I don’t drink any milk, hate the stuff. Wouldn’t give anyone two bits for it.

  29. In Ontario, land that is used for agricultural purposes is taxed at 1/4 the rate of rural land that is not used for farming.
    Except the farm residence, and one acre surrounding it is taxed at the residential rate.
    Anyway, is there some reason farmers owe any amount to educate your kids?

  30. Cows freshen naturally in Jan – Mar.
    No they don’t, They freshen when they have a calf. A cow will breed anytime of the year, nothing to do with lighting.
    Gawd, the ignorance…and then they think they know how a dairy should be run.

  31. Just as idiotic as PETA wanting BEN & JERRY Ice Cream(Puke,Puke,Puke)to use human rather then cows milk STUPID,STUPID PETA and STUPID STUPID INGRID NEWKIRK

  33. Oh, so you’re equating your $1 to their $20? heh
    Where else can you get a 20 to 1 return? Typical socialist…get the gov’t to force someone else to pay ‘equally’. Just fix the rules so they pay more…equally.

  34. I’ve noticed the same time in my area with gas prices up near highs even though oil is nowhere near its highs. Besides the dissonance over that, no government can now continue to claim poverty in oil taxes going forward. But they will, make my words. No doubt the NDP will sell their carbon taxes on lower oil prices, except the pump price is right back where it was so cue for tax backlash when he does. I don’t think Mr Mulcair is going to have a very good summer, nor will Mr Trudeau with his politics of (his) fear. Canadians aren’t stupid and they aren’t afraid and they won’t be voting in a quickie election campaign such as that engineered by the new buffoon of Conservative politics, Jim Prentice.
    Harper has been given a long look, now it’s the others’ turn. It will not go well. BS about who is who’s second choice (EKOS admits they eat each others’ vote) will soon enough become irrelevant.
    The worm will turn when Canadians take shrill criticism of Canada personally, with Harper as the piñata, and turn on their leftist brethren, especially right of centre Grits.
    Remember not one pollster called for a 2011 Harper Majority, even days before the election. The BC NDP were predicted to win a majority the day before the provincial election; instead Christie Clark got the majority. In both cases voters took a look at the alternatives and decided not to rock the boat.

  35. Hold on buckshot. We have 120 acres of rural land and farm some of it. We haven’t applied for the farm rate on any of it. We pay the same taxes as a farmer with 480 acres.

  36. I’ve noticed the same time in my area with gas prices up near highs even though oil is nowhere near its highs.
    Best get rid of the marketing board…er, I guess there isn’t one. Not an official one, anyway…all their ‘official’ inquiries tell us there isn’t.

  37. Must be pretty poor land if you can’t make $7000 off it. No wonder you have to have your kids education paid by others…

  38. Now you even sound stupider than you did in your previous post. We make well over the minimum income required to get a property tax break. We just choose to pay our own way without having our fellow citizens subsidize our rates.

  39. Ohhh, you’re one of those who believe paying fewer taxes is a subsidy. Typical socialist…I guess you don’t use income tax credits either…?

  41. We just choose to pay our own way without having our fellow citizens subsidize our rates.
    “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”
    Speaking of snouts and a yolk…

  42. Speaking of snouts and yolks. ..
    Let me finish that sentence for you:
    …stradivarious continues to fiddle with his limp non sequitor.

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