I sympathize with Max Burt of Manitoulin Island in his pursuit of approvals to produce chicken for his processing plant and local customers.
The Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board refuses to cut him any slack.
He appealed, and now the Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Tribunal has also refused to come to his aid.
This is how supply management becomes an idol that crushes people.
Burt has argued that his father was a chicken producer and qualified for quota, but didn't know he needed to apply. The chicken board didn't advertise its intentions to the people of Manitoulin Island.
Burt argued that, likewise, the chicken board did not inform Manitoulin Island people about a lottery it set up to grant quota to new producers.
And the chicken board refuses to grant him an exemption so he can produce chicken and process chicken for the local market, yet this same chicken board is granting exemptions for 300 birds each per year to about 14,000 people in Southern Ontario.
The chicken board and the tribunal both ruled that if Burt wants to pursue his dream of producing chicken for his processing plant, he will need to buy quota - at $100 to $105 per unit. And the chicken board sets a minimum of 14,000 units, which means an investment of $1.4 to $1.47 million.
And he would need to buy that quota from one or several of the existing members of the chicken marketing board. There are about 1,000 of them, and at current quota prices, they're all millionaires and multi-millionaires.
So we have a system in place in Ontario that features an exclusive club of government-supported millionaires refusing to cut any slack for an enterprising, hard-working farmer on remote Manitoulin Island trying to serve a local market.
And these millionaires beg and plead and bully politicians to defend their system from any concessions in world trade talks designed to benefit some of the poorest farmers in the poorest nations on earth.
Crazy, eh?
