After four decades of supply management for Canada’s poultry
industry, it’s obvious that it has been a failure.
Instead of survival of family farms, we a sharply-reduced
number of multi-million-dollar operations.
Instead of security for future generations of farmers, we
have greater risks and uncertainties than ever, largely because the benefits of
steady and high profits have been squandered on ever-increasing prices for
quota.
Instead of the promise of a steady supply of wholesome food,
we have a high-cost, provincially-balkanized system resistant to consumer
preferences and marketing innovations.
The poorest Canadians cannot afford what Canadian poultry
farmers produce; they could easily afford the same products at U.S. prices.
The system is run on inventories, not market preferences.
What I mean is that whenever poultry companies can’t sell
what they offer, it backs up as inventories and that prompts the
supply-management marketing boards to reduce production.
That clears the inventories – the least desirable products
available ag the least desirable locations and times of the year.
Meanwhile, the demand for the most desirable products at the
most desirable locations and times is not met.
Even the safety valve of imports to alleviate shortages is
now under the influence of the poultry marketing boards. So, for example, CAMI
International Poultry Inc. of Welland, Ont., is unable to fill the demand for
Hong Kong dressed chicken in Toronto and the surrounding area.
Chicken that is produced at the highest cost in Canada, such
as in Newfoundland, ends up in the cities where demand is the greatest, such as
Toronto and Montreal.
I got a kick out of the article the Globe and Mail that
credited Eugene Whelan with helping to bring perestroika to Russia.
If so, Whelan’s advice ran totally counter to his support
for supply management.
That was a proven failure in Russia. It’s a failure today
across Canada.
I could provide dozens more examples of how supply management has been abused, misused and failed, but you probably have more than enough examples of your own.
