Saturday, March 24, 2018

NAFTA NEGOTIATIONS & SUPPLY MANAGEMENT

    FP:  Lost in the Trump/Trudeau collaboration is any talk of reforming Canada’s supply management system for farm products.
    Trudeau is big on defending steel workers, not so hot on Canadian dairy consumers and jobs. Canada is “totally committed” to supply management, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said last year, and Ottawa has given no indication that it is willing to change a system that, by design, protects the entire Canadian dairy supply chain from competition and dings consumers with some of the highest dairy prices in the world.
   Instead of holding town halls in steel plants to promote Canada’s fight for free trade in steel, Trudeau and his ministers should be out in the farm belts of the nation explaining how opening the dairy industry to trade liberalization would produce major benefits for consumers, the dairy industry and the economy.
   The case for ending the current regime has been made many times. Now a new research paper nicely summarizes the basis for a campaign to instruct Canadians on the realities of supply management.

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