Ottawa-Canada needs to fully support supply management for the dairy and poultry sectors because they deliver good products, provide rural sustainability and contribute to food security and sovereignty, says Bruce Muirhead, a history professor at the University of Waterloo.

Muirhead told the Senate agriculture committee, which is studying a Bloc Quebecois bill to prevent any further trade concessions on dairy and poultry imports, that “supply management in all sectors in which it operates is simply the best system for a country like Canada to have and very important to preserve.”

He based thar conclusion on 15 years of studying supply management and agricultural organizational models found in other countries and earlier work on the development of post-war Canadian trade policy.

Canada would be remiss if it did not continue to fully support its supply-managed sectors because “we would rapidly lose those areas to American competition, not because our farmers are not state of the art and very productive, producing an excellent Canadian product to satisfy Canadian consumers at a reasonable price, but because of certain U.S. advantages for which we have no reply.” They include public dairy subsidies for U.S. farmers and cheap immigrant labour.

“Also Canadian consumers would be confronted with ingredients like rBST in milk, which is a growth hormone that we have kept out of our system and that is designed to artificially increase a cow’s milk production by about 15 per cent,” he said.

Smaller dairy and egg farms “provide a stability on rural concession roads that is unmatched when they are adequately supported. They support local communities socially but also economically.”

About 68 per cent of the U.S. dairy milk is produced on farms of more than 1,000 milking cows, known as confined animal feeding operations. There are dairy farms with more than 15,000 milking cows, while egg farms of more than 1 million birds are not unusual. “This does not contribute to rural sustainability, which is a bedrock of Canadian identity and public policy,” he said.

“Finally, supply management contributes to food security and sovereignty. We saw first-hand with the pandemic the importance of food security. Without supply management, it is doubtful we could maintain our production of dairy, eggs and poultry from coast to coast to coast.”

Australia let its dairy farmers participate in the international market through deregulation in 2001, but ended up losing its dairy security and, following 23 years of declining production, is now importing butter and cheese for the first time, Muirhead said. “That could be Canada’s future, too, if the supply-managed system is given away in dribs and drabs in trade negotiations.

“It is vital that we maintain our system of supply management and not slowly compromise its integrity in various trade negotiations. It is important to say that enough is enough, and the necessity to keep dairy, eggs and poultry production in place to satisfy Canadian appetites in the years to come is crucial.

“American milk is cheaper; that is true. I don’t know that it would necessarily translate into cheaper prices once it comes into Canada. They also have tens of millions of gallons of excess production.”

Canada introduced supply management to control excess production, which is a waste of resources, energy and money, he said. “If you read about American farmers, and dairy farmers in particular, they decry the effects of agribusiness on their industry as well. People milking 300 cows, which would be a very big farm in Canada, in the U.S. is a small farm.”

This news item prepared for National Newswatch