Al Mussel and Doug Hedley have released a note on the dairy-industry issues raised by United States President Donald Trump, and they claim he's wrong in saying Canadian action has hurt their industry.
But their argument is misleading in citing U.S. exports to Canada for 2016.
For most of 2016, there was no policy reaction from Canada's marketing boards to the increasing tide of diafiltered milk coming in from the United States.
But Ontario did react later in the year to set a competitive price for its milk so Canadian processing plants need not import diafiltered milk from the U.S.
First Agropur, a farmer-owned cooperative, stopped importing.
Then others followed, but not until either very late in 2016 or this year.
So when the Americans complain that they have lost exports to Canada, they can be referring to what has happened this year.
Mussel and Hedley surely know that. They should have said so in their news release and "note" on the dairy-industry dispute.
