Here’s a bizarre story about nervous nuns, cute cows, and the byzantine way Canadian governments manage milk production:
As inflation soars, dairy farmers say price increases are necessary to cover ballooning costs.
But industry advocates argue that no other industry is able to pass on its cost increases directly on to the consumer. Canada’s controversial supply-management system protects dairy, poultry and egg farmers from international competition by regulating supply and imposing massive border tariffs on imports.
Supply management also forces farmers to pay millions in marketing costs to provincial milk boards. This week, a portion of that money found its way to the upper right-hand corner of the Maple Leaf’s jerseys as the Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) became the NHL team’s first sweater branding partner. DFO refuse to say how much the deal cost.
h/t James MacMaster
Ask Max what that cost
A government monopoly uses your money to advertise it’s products to you, keeping costs and prices up.
As bad as MPI in Manitoba, government monopoly vehicle insurance, advertising at Winnipeg Jets games.
Don’t forget the MLCC at Blue Bomber games.
I wish America would go hard against Canada so I can get affordable cheese.. I couldn’t care less if our dairy went teats up..
Hard to find what looks like “real” cheese that doesn’t look like liquid plastic injected into a plastic bag and left to solidify.
What does cheese go for in Canada? I’m in southern Wisconsin, decent cheese is $6 a pound. Good cheese $8. Slices of grocery store crap are $2.50 for 8oz. Or $3 for 6oz now I noticed.
We used to buy okay-good quality cheese on sale at a penny a gram, now probably 1.2 cents per gram. 8oz is 226g, so we used to be paying about 2.26 for that, or more likely 9$ for 900g (a bit shy of 2lb)
Now we pay about 9.80 for 900g of decent cheese on a good day, probably 50% more than that for specially cheese.
It seems more or less comparable, even favorable for us given the exchange.
I’d love to know where you’re buying cheese that cheap. It’s more than double that price.
Saskatchewan.
Last week we got 400g packs for 5$, so that’s 1.25, but 400g packs are never as good as 900g packs on sale.
Aged Cheddar is sometimes 100g smaller, so 800g for 9.80, or else it doesn’t come on sale at all. But the regular chedder/marble/mozza can be found for under 10$/900g if you look for it.
Bulk premium cheeses are better bought from specialty shops, and again are like 50% more expensive than that. Sometimes loblaws has decent Swiss for a decent price. But for hard cheeses like Parmigian specialty stores are the way to go.
In the GTA exurbs, it’s between $6-9 CAD a pound.
When we lived in the US we were gifted a large block of red waxed cheddar cheese that came from a university in Wisconsin. There was no branding on it so I haven’t a clue what it would be called. It was such good cheese. So good we remember it fondly 20 years later.
“Affordable Cheese” would be a good name for a band. They could play pizzerias.
A friend of ours and his son sold their Ontario dairy farm about 10 years ago and moved to upstate NY to escape the cartel and never-ending regulations. Now there is a strong push from a lot of US dairy farmers to adopt a marketing & quota system just like here.
Farmers are the most entitled and self-pitying people in the world. They really believe they are the world and are owed it.
You misspelled Beurocrats.
Priceless.
Okay, grow your own damned food then, asswipe. See how well that flowerpot on your urban balcony in that Vancouver condo feeds you month over month.
You can totally opt out of their offerings and begin a one-man boycott. I know a few people here will help you out by showing up to clear out your pantry and fridge with all those offending goods.
Please keep us up to date with your progress!!!
Massive bureaucratic overhead paid for by the consumer. Actual benefit to consumer – nil. Scrap the lot and let the free market prevail.
Moved from Canada to the UK a month ago. Tesco extra mature cheddar @ $11.01/kg. 2% milk @ $1.05/ l. It was worth moving here just for the cheese! And UK butter will actually melt in your mouth.
“It’s hard to feel too sympathetic for Duval. With a 70-kilo milking quota, he’ll make $1.7 million in the sale of that alone.”
And then he’ll pay $422,869 in taxes on that sale, or more with a 53.31% marginal tax rate.
The whole milk Cartel is rotten and should be done away with
Just raise the retail price of milk to $10/L and the farmers will all do very well.
BTW, why is the minimum wage at $15.50? Let’s make it $100 and we’ll all be rich!
All this fuss over the processed pasteurized swill sold in stores? The farmers are slaves. The CDC are crooks. The people are sheep. Just don’t buy it. Get your own and get healthy and save the world.
Wuts all this ere? You incitin crimnal activity?
Got a loicence fer that milk you thinkin uf buyin? More dangerous than gunz that raw milk is eh?
This was a pretty good article marred only by the section that everyone of these articles has that tries to make me feel sorry for those poor poor farmers. No one is more entitled and self-pitying than The Farmer.
What I find most fascinating is that in aesthetics and at the socio-economic level, this is basically ‘post-modern Medievalism”. Using ‘progressive’ means to maintain and defend antiquated ancient regimes ie small farms and their backwater communities. And isn’t that Quebec to a T? It’s certainly the essence of the Legault regime.
“He wanted to become a lawyer instead, but the family calling became too hard to ignore.”
There is nothing more evil than the notion that you are obligated to carry on the family business, besides the notion that society has to support your stupid attachment to the home range. Rootless Cosmopolitanism FTW.
This is all coming to an end by the way. Cow-free synthetic milk is already out there and in some ways better than the real thing. For one thing, it substitutes lactose with galactose rendering the whole lactose intolerance issue moot.
https://www.greenmatters.com/food/animal-free-dairy-milk
Upon reading the history of the world nothing could convince me that justice anywise exists except this: when the empire collapses under the weight of rootless cosmopolitanism, the cosmopolitans themselves die horribly with it, and the provincial farmer and his values retakes everything, even the urban centers.
The meek do in fact inherent the earth.
LOL whose going to pay the provincial farmer the subsidies he demands? Make no mistake me and my fellow rootless cosmos are holding this place up, ‘Empire’ or no.
I await the day the countryside is without dollars and the cities are without food.
History shows again and again which one fares better.
Here’s the thing, farmers get up each morning expecting NOTHING from you (which may actually be the general case for everyone in your life), yet you wake up each morning with the preposterous expectation that farmers have toiled all day to supply you with the basic necessities you require to keep your arrogant fingers tapping out the naive belligerence we have skim over.
Oh by the way Poilievre has explicitly stated he isn’t interested in ending Supply Management. So much the great killer of gatekeepers.
PS: with Canadian dairy, it’s not just the cost, it’s the quality. Or rather the dire lack of it. Go visit the US and have their dairy. It’s variable but good. Beats the garbage in Canada. Even the carton designs are bad!
Yabbut! Remember how all the farmers went bankrupt and everyone starved to death after Harper got rid of the Canadian Wheat Board.
Quebec has guarantees of a certain percentage of Canada’s bulk milk products market. I think it’s 50% ?
You know what AB gets in return? We get to figure out a way of exporting natural gas and oil products in any other way which the federal #Libranos permit, which at this moment, is about 1/2 of what we’re capable of exporting.
In the next 3 months there’s going to be a few tax increases, including an increased “carbon” tax that affects everyone, especially lower income and fixed income people.
Phone your MP and tell them how you really feel.
If your MP is an NDP member, especially tell them that you’ll “never again” donate funds to the NDP, even
if you’ve never given money to them in your life. They don’t need to know that last part…
I doubt the #Libranos care if you don’t give money to them.
The CBC staff were given raises this year, the mgmt were given raises, the CBC budget (gift) from the federal grifters was increased this year.
Even if you’re now watering down your milk in your morning cereal.
In the current trajectory the outcome should deconstruct the affliction of liberal cognitive dissonance.
Same in music, movies, all media all controlled just like Communist Cuba. Remember when the useless RCMP was sent after Albertans satellite tv dishes because a handful bought US tv programming or the Communist CWB and locking up Alberta Farmers for selling their own property. F*ck The Great Canadian Penal Colony.
Same with oil, alcohol, tobacco, cars, shipping, etc.
“F*ck The Great Canadian Penal Colony.”-they’re working on making the colony planetary.
Whoa there good buddies. How many of you belong to a union? How about an association of some kind, like all professionals? Almost everyone is protected in some way. So why pick on farmers? You think they are well off? Buy a farm and get on the gravy train!!
Or are you all just looking for a free lunch at the farmers expense? Stop the bellyaching!
LOL.
FO.
Has no one told you that two wrongs do not make a right? And no, I am not a part of a union or any other such degeneracy.
You got that half right. The only laws protecting unions should be contract law and there should be no exclusive right to practice laws for any guilds or professions.
The dairy lobby is the biggest lobby in Canada and has all major electable politicians right where they want them.
I’d add that should mean ‘right to work’ legislation also gets the axe. Ayn Rand hated RTW and rightly so.
Because no one is picking on the farmers.
This thread is about a bureaucracy taking on a life of its own.
You cannot enter the dairy farming business as a small herd owner since supply management entered the scene, 100 head minimum and the mandatory quota. This puts the cost up beyond what anyone but those with established capital can enter. So it doesn’t look like there is much interest to protect the little guys as much as protect the system and the cut given to the government.
If the feds don’t getcha, the province will.
If the province don’t getcha the municipality will.
If the municipality don’t getcha, the feds will.
Round and round we go.
The supply chains are flicked too. My milk often goes bad before BBF dates.
How long would the taxpayer supported milk cartel last if it was centered in Alberta, not Quebec? I think we know the answer.
Not sure if my memory is correct but I read somewhere that Wisconsin dairy farmers throw enough milk in the garbage each day to meet the entire Canadian daily demand for milk.
My understanding of the DFO is that it is an advertising agency that sponsors a number of professional sports teams (not just the Leafs)…and it’s done through the MILKUP program, which is merely a donation based program designed to improve the profile of milk based products produced in Ontario.
However, I’d have to see the balance sheets to determine if that’s where all the sponsorship money comes from. It might be only a portion with a significant amount coming from dues etc. However, if it is 100% donation, I don’t see the problem.
All this and its illegal for a farmer to sell me whole milk to do with as i wish. Would lose their license. Sounds so wrong.
Can’t quote a dollar figure but I’m sure it included some prime box seats up in the Scotia Bank Arena.
There is more lobbying goes on there than at Parliament Hill and Queens Park combined.