The Globe and Mail has put the Asia-Pacific trade-negotiation threat to supply management on the top of its front page today.
And apparently many of the supply-management marketing boards and national agencies are in near-panic mode today, calling emergency meetings to try to orchestrate their public response and lobbying.
What's all the fuss about? Supply management has been on the table at the World Trade Organization negotiations for 10 years. And it's on the table in the negotiations with Europe.
The fuss is this: supply management is going to get its wings clipped. All that remains to be determined is by how much.
The World Trade Organization is the way we ought to go, and for two very important reasons. One is that this round of WTO negotiations aims to help the poorest people of the world with trade concessions which would be far more important than all the aid governments currently provide. Another is that almost everybody is in the WTO negotiations and there's less chance for the economic bullies to prevail.
But Canada's supply-management marketing boards have been lobbying intensely to keep the WTO negotiations from forcing them to make one iota of concession. Something that I suppose Canadians can feel proud about, eh? Beggar the beggars to sustain the millionaires.
