Context, Please

The attacks on supply management in the media came fast and furious in November. With the announcement that the federal government was moving forward with its plan to abolish the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) Act and with its stance on protecting supply management relegating it to “observer” status in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks, the attacks were inevitable.

That doesn’t mean all of the criticism is valid. What’s missing from the arguments is context. It’s easy for journalists to jump on the “if the feds get rid of the wheat board they are hypocrites for supporting supply management” bandwagon when they have no understanding of  what supply management is, or why it was created in the first place.

Numerous articles have essentially rehashed the same critical views – that supply management is on the same level as the CWB and should, therefore, be treated equally; that the system results in increased costs to consumers; and that it is a barrier to trade talks. It doesn’t matter which media outlet started the roller-coaster ride that ensued; very few outlets actually did their homework.

As for the media’s criticism, let’s start with the CWB. As my esteemed colleague Jim Knisley points out in his column, critics forget that the CWB is a sole federal entity, whereas supply management is an agreement between the provinces and the federal government. If the federal government wanted to dismantle supply management on a national level, it would still exist on a provincial level. Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz says farmers want marketing freedom, and results from a CWB plebiscite show many of them do. The same cannot be said for farmers under supply management.

To say that supply management is the sole cause of the price disparity in dairy, poultry and eggs between Canada and the U.S. is simply naive. Time after time, the fact that the U.S. treasury subsidizes its country’s agricultural production via consumer taxes and thinly veiled consumer and energy support programs is left out of the discussion. If comparisons are to be made, let’s compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges.

When Canada declared its desire to join the TPP, it was blocked by the U.S. and New Zealand due to its refusal to decrease tariffs on imported dairy products. This led many to believe that trade opportunities with Asia would not be possible without giving up supply management. Not so, according to University of Waterloo professor Bruce Muirhead, who participated in a panel discussion on supply management on TV Ontario’s news program The Agenda. Muirhead said that in the globalization of trade, every country has something to protect and Canada will still be able to make trade deals with participating countries.

What gives such criticism of supply management momentum is the lack of understanding of the system, and its roots.

In this month’s issue, we’ve done our homework, and present a “look back” on the beginnings of supply management, and why it was formed, in order to arm you with information so that when the critics come calling, you can let them know how and why the system makes sense.