I just don't like how opaque the whole thing is and I don't think most Canadians have an understanding of the impact on their pocketbook.
Yet my point was, even though Americans spout blather about market intervention via Governments, they do it too.
Australia and NZ are bad examples. They are incredibly isolated for fresh milk competitors, and fresh cheese too. We, meanwhile, have a market 10x larger next door.
But beyond that every government manages its agricultural industry. If NZ and Australia "did well" without market supply at the front, then you can be sure they did so by bail outs, market interference, and other methods at the back end.
And those methods cause consumers money, taxes are used to do these things.
There is no open dairy market in the US. It's an illusion, as I mentioned.
Look at thr disaster of 2008. Americans did the same thing, didn't manage and regulate, then the market explodes, and they spend trillions in clean up.
That's still manipulation and market management, it's just the most disruptive, damaging, stupid way to do so.
And American have the money, and the ability to manipulate the world's reserve currency in situations like this.
We don't. We have to manage things responsibly.
I'm OK with positively modifying supply management. Find a specific problem, fix it. Improve it.
But not with tossing it.
I'm just saying, and I know this is an estimate, but if you take the $244/annum/pp estimate from studies as to the cost of supply chain management... you're looking at about $10 billion per year.
Broadly, I think the goal of our supply chain management is to preserve a robust domestic dairy, poultry, and egg industry, maintain emergency production capacity, support rural communities, smooth out extreme price volatility, and ensure farmers can survive downturns.
I'd just be very surprised, if we asked ourselves, ok, how can we most efficiently achieve the above, and actually tried to solve the above problems from first principles today, we'd land on the current solution. It just feels like we should be able to achieve a much better outcome for $10 billion dollars, or we should be able to achieve the equivalent of the current outcome for far less than $10 billion.
Is it a bloated bureaucracy, which needs some trimming, but still regardless pays wages to Canadians?
Are other things wrapped into that $10B?
Also, it seems those numbers aren't just dairy, but chicken too?
And another thing (I'm full of ideas today, sorry), we don't use hormones to increase milk production, or bulk up animals. That definitely means more cost per animal. That figure seems to also include chicken meat, not just eggs. Healthy isn't necessarily free.
Look, you find horrible costs, I'll support you. I think that's fair.
I agree generally that just looking at cost often misses the bigger picture, but it's the magnitude of it here that gets me. $10 billion is equivalent to 2% of the federal budget!
We spend a similar amount in the budget, $10.7 billion, to ensure the viability and sustainability of all our crown corporations with the exception of CMHC! So, a national railway, a national postal service, a public broadcaster, museums, infrastructure entities, finance institutions, housing institutions, export support, tourism, bridges, agricultural finance, and thirty other random Crown things… All made viable for approximately the equivalent of the cost born by Canadians to support chicken, egg, and milk producers.
And, it's not like this is our entire food supply. Massive error bars here, but based on the average consumption numbers for Canadians in the egg, poultry, and dairy categories, which, the dairy part is admittedly quite fuzzy... But my back of the napkin math suggests that's somewhere between 10-20% of the caloric/nutritional needs of Canadians, so it's not like it's securing the majority of the food supply for Canadians, we're very much still dependent on the global food production.
Ultimately, I believe what it comes down to, is that a different system that would likely be more effective at achieving similar outcomes, would force some level of support onto the federal government and hit the budget. Whereas the current system allows the government to say, we've created a system that doesn't depend on government subsidies! Yes, we've done that, but it's effectively a regressive tax that hits consumers at the checkout.
Anyhow, I am not an expert on food supply, so I don't know what exactly a better solution would look like. But, we're currently all in on a system that was developed in the 1970s, and it has a feeling of 'too big to fail'. That to me, is a recipe for horrible inefficiency, and given the magnitude of the numbers, I can't help but feel that we'd be well served to take a deeper look at the situation and consider whether there's a better way to achieve the outcomes at lower cost to Canadians. Hell, even if we determine, nope switching over to a subsidy model paid by the government would cost the exact same amount for the same outcome, at least it would achieve a more equitable outcome for Canadians in switching from a regressive to a progressive tax.