He is absolutely correct here. It is up to the party.
If he wins today, as I hope, it will be his and our job to convince the party that supply management of dairy and poultry products is a bad thing.
I empathize with supply management supporters though, the up-front costs of buying the quota are huge, indeed they are the retirement plan for the farmers.
For Bernier to succeed he must have a plan to reimburse those who have and are paying for the quotas. These aren’t ‘rich farmers’ as the less educated detractors claim, they are Joe and Jane Frontporch doing the best they can. Only then will he be able to convince the non-fiscal wings of the CPC that supply management is more hurtful to consumers than beneficial to a small handful of farmers.
Fortunately for Bernier (and us) he has never shied away from arguing his point with logic and facts.
Enough quota to milk 50 cows is $1.5 million. That’s a small dairy farmer. Not exactly poor in my neighborhood. When I was a wee lad, my parents milked 7 by hand.
I don’t have the numbers, but I suspect that when the quotas were originally introduced they cost the farmer zero and were based on their current (at that time) production.
I know this is true with Taxi licences in Montreal.
So the farmers, taxi drivers, sap harvesters, etc. made a pact with the devil.
They traded the uncertainty of their income with an agreement to restrict competition and increase prices to every consumer. The government was happy to facilitate the process.
Now the inevitable has happened. For taxis, it’s Uber, Lyft and self-driving cars. For sap harvesters, it’s the erosion of their market by producers in adjacent provinces and states.
Why should we have to bail out these subsidized producers again?
Why should the governments that facilitated this mess walk away?
Buying out the quotas will cost billions and probably be replaced by some other program to buy votes at the expense of every other taxpayer.
Government is the problem and every deal you make results in damage to others.
Wrong lance. By and large they are very wealthy farmers.
And many of those in the west want sm done away with as they are far more capable of growing and profiting in a much lower price environment.
The bigger political issue is the impacts on land prices in eastern Canada – especially the eastern townships – if sm is done away with. There are remedies – allowing Ag Reits being one – and it is those policies that the cpc needs to develop and promote.
While your argument has some logic the fact is those producers bent their operations and practices to conform with the controlled market. They made very long-term bets and plans under the assumption that the system would remain in place.
The breaking of the deal should be compensated for. That some were granted quota for free is a secondary consideration.
Compensation should be discounted to account for duration of benefit. Any quota purchased any longer than say, 25 years ago should be considered to have paid for itself.
That’s a good way to put that. A supporter of Mr. Bernier phoned the other day asking for my support and the subject of SM came up. The lady on the phone who happened to have a French accent was almost apologetic about Max’s stand on SM and I told her that his stand on SM was brave and that every once of his bravery will be required in the days ahead if he is chosen leader.
Or pass a law right now that quota will vanish in 25 years. Pay farmers nothing for the quota. Let the consumers buy them out. What a great idea. Tax food to make millionaires richer.
The dairy farmer’s I’ve known drive lambos and live in 5000 sq ft mansions. Cry me a river. Shut it down screw them.
My local chamber of commerce with the assent of the alberta chamber brought forward a policy resolutions a few years ago recommending a gradual retirement to quota over a ten plus year timeframe. That would work if it were coupled with loan facilities to make it easier for those who wish to stay in the sector to expand.
The problem is the longer we drag our feet the less time our trading partners will allow us to phase it out. It is far better for Canada to be proactive on this.
Well maxime was my second pick trost was my first. If maxime wins I hope he eliminates the sm scam as was stated above farmers farm because they love farming they love the lifestyle my grandparents were farmers , they did very very well on their little 3&3/4 sections of land raised 4 kids , have an excellent retirement ,grandpa always fixed his equipment from the 60’s never bought new and I see no issue ending it outright. Phase it out over a few years if the impact will be to big , but I still feel maxime will crater and give in to the left. Like Harper did if he doesn’t and he stands his ground I will donate to the party once again and start actually paying attention.
I’m tired of “incrementalism” the left does not know the word, the left does not know bi partisan , they are steam rollers, look at Alberta ,Bc , Ontario, non stop pushing the lefty agenda from gay blow job posters in junior high classes in Ontario , to shutting down Christian universities…..they don’t stop and neither should we.
I love farmers some of the best people doing some pretty demanding work. What they need is the free market to be free and gov to stop meddling , lower taxes and cut regulations……sound familiar? USA will continue to destroy us if we don’t start rising to be competitive …..remember USA farmers (most of them) can grow year round…we can’t.
I will support and vote for who ever wins that’s for sure but we need a guy with a stiff upper lip who is not politically correct , comfortable in his skin and not afraid to cut Canadians free from gov leashes that includes farmers. I know some farmers like supply management but to bad. Figure it out shit or get off the pot.
I have always believed that is one of many “SOFT” transfers into the province of Quebec. By soft I mean over and above the official estimate of transfer payments. If Quebec has 30% of the Canadian population, I would be surprised if they don’t have at least 40% of these deals. Kind of like federal direct and indirect employment. What are the chances that Quebec has their appropriate % based on population.
One of the reasons so called conservatives always keep losing; you are slaves to the party. The party is collectivism; while you paradoxically claim to be for individualism. Always placing the group ahead of the individual. No wonder no one believes in the ideas, that the champions of the ideas, do not practice themselves.
You keep saying the media is the enemy; yet you hang on their every word. You keep saying the media is irrelevant; yet you assiduously follow every word that comes out of the NYT. You say “respect the office”; the ofgice has not earned any respect in over 100 years.
“The non fiscal wings of the party”. What wings would those be? The social conservatives, Lance has personally told to sod off what, 900 million times? The communist lite wing; they are just 5th column.
It is time to push the car off the cliff. What will it take to get Notely, Wynne, or Bob Rae himself as PM. The only way out of the communist sewer that Canada is, is to hurry the full destruction and inevitable civil war that commnism entails. Then, either the sane can execute all remaining communists and rebuild, or we never have to worry about it again.
You are forgetting that the farmers colluded with the government in order to put supply management in place. Had they not asked for it, the government would probably not have done it.
Now that Maxime is pointing out that they have unfairly benefited at the expense of all consumers, they are complaining?
I have zero sympathy. They are just as guilty as the government.
Life is full of decisions and risks. Buying a home, picking a field of study, farming, investing. The farmers chose to make a deal with the devil and hopefully Maxime will end that deal. If he can find a way to make it less painful, great… but SM is still wrong.
They all knew it was wrong when they asked for it, but they hoped the inevitable problems could just be delayed until it was no longer their problem.
..just like the current Liberal government running up billions in debt.
Get real. If Maxime wins he will not be elected . I am doubtful any of the other candidates have much chance either . If he wins , I am certian the Liberls and the msm are syliavating offer the opportunity this stance will present them. Trudeau knows who butters his bread ,
Agree entirely with Lance here, particularly this: “I empathize with supply management supporters though, the up-front costs of buying the quota are huge…”
Effects of supply management have been ruinous. Canada should be a world leader in value added. It should be and once was the world’s largest cheese exporter per capita. Instead, it’s the world’s largest importer per capita.
And yes, farmers will have to be compensated for the huge capital invested in buying quotas.
You do realize that supply management in dairy started generations ago. I suspect the farmers who have quota now had to buy it off people who have long since passed on. They didn’t get anything for free, they had no choice but to buy into the system as it exists.
Some farmers “colluded” certainly not those in the west.
It was a response to mechanization and the massive shifts that would have caused (and did happen in the US where 90% of eggs are produced on a handful of farms). The biggest beneficiaries were in Quebec and eastern Ontario. And it was very much a vote buying exercise.
All that noted the political reality is that the entitled ones will have to be bribed to leave it just as those who have defined benefit pensions will have to be bribed to move to MPPs.
The government should publish a price schedule for quotas covering the next 10 years. A narrow range in prices for 2 years and then by year 10 the price declines to zero. Quota owners that want to sell can schedule their sales according to the price they want. Buyers likewise.
The government would likely need to subsidize the quota sales and anyone buying would have to repay the subsidy if wanting to resell to the government.
This lets the producers sort it out among themselves.
Why chase a issue that will be lost to NAFTA… Let the negotiations get rid of supply management.. When Mad Max got out front he takes the arrows hoping he gets the reward. Not bright
The same logic is at work in BC.. The Greens could destroy themselves by joining the NDP in opposition to the pipeline…If the Fed’s build it anyway…the Greens would have wasted themselves on an issue they couldn’t control….
well we now know where “conservatives” stand, as I have said for decades there are no conservatives left in Canada, a moderate who will follow liberal policies has been elected party leader.
‘Supply Management’ gifted the higher margin products like cheese etc to Quebec. Huge difference between ‘white milk’ and higher end products which most people do not realize. In B.C. I do not believe that the province produces even enough ‘white milk’ to be self sufficient. It is unfair and as mentioned above another soft benefit to Quebec. Many dairies in Quebec who milk less than 100 animals. Out here in B.C. 100 cows is hardly break even.
Another reason why dairy is such an issue in the agriculture industry is that it supports a huge supply network. Grain, forage, vets, building suppliers, and base farm real estate values. It is a key building block for diversifying farm production from grains.
SCREW YOU. They took the crow rate from us. We suffered. So I say, let you and your eastern masters suffer too.
Pay the farmers what they originally paid for quotas plus interest. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!! Quota farmers have been ripping off consumers for decades, protected by tariffs. They don’t deserve any payments.