It is a normal business practice, prof argues.Ottawa—Canada's supply management system has survived 40 years of international scrutiny because it is fair and does not break international trade rules, says Tim Carroll, a business professor at the University of Prince Edward Island.Supply management is not a subsidy program that puts competitors at a disadvantage, Carroll, a former PEI agriculture minister and manager of the Ontario Vegetable Board, told the Commons international trade committee.It is studying a Bloc Quebecois bill that would prohibit the federal government from increasing access to foreign dairy and poultry imports as part of any future trade agreement.Granting more access to Canada's dairy and poultry markets was “disrespectful of the organized marketing system put together by producers under provincial legislation,” he said. The Bloc bill will stop “giving away further access to our well-served, organized and safe system of providing food.”Supply management system has survived examinations by the World Trade Organization and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, as well as negotiations for the European, Pacific and North American trade deals.It comes down to Canada having different ways of controlling the supply of food products than does Europe and the U.S. European countries have experimented with different producer- or government-controlled production programs to mimic the impact supply management has in Canada, he said.“Supply management is a normal business practice. It's just a matter of who controls it. I don't know of any industry or business that doesn't project their demand and try to fit their supply to it. The poultry and milk sectors seem to have done that very well. Each commodity group has designed different systems in different ways of supply management.”There are many factors at play in trade negotiations, he said. “I see no evidence or past experience that would suggest that because supply management is off the table, our negotiators would be severely compromised. There's a lot more going on in the room than just one item.”All of Canada's main trading partners use some form of supply management for farm commodities. Carroll recalled that during his time with the vegetable board, the U.S. maintained several food-purchasing programs for foreign aid, the military, school lunch programs and food stamp programs.“For example, if I was watching the price of canned peas softening, I could almost predict that within about two weeks or so the USDA would announce a major food purchase of canned peas for school lunches or the military or whatever. The point is that they remove product from the market, and subsequently the price of canned peas rises.“You can't undermine the entire supply management system,” Carroll said. “We've always, from the formation of the Egg Marketing Agency and the Chicken Marketing Agency, had quotas drawn up for each province, but also, quotas were drawn up on the same basis for products that were being imported into Canada on a five-year average.“Supply management introduced the concept of parallelism to solve the problem and at the same time respect the shared jurisdiction of the federal and provincial governments.”