People shop for milk at a grocery store in Toronto, on Dec. 8, 2021.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Now only rich men can eat quiche.
Made with eggs, cheese and cream, this savoury pastry dish is a family favourite. It’s hard to believe that quiche was once considered peasant cuisine in France. Given the rising cost of its main ingredients, it is becoming too costly to make in Canada.
My French relatives can’t understand why Canadians aren’t protesting in the streets. As my mother-in-law says: “Faites la grève!” (Go on strike!) Not only are we overpaying for staples, including dairy and eggs, but the federal government wants to keep it that way.
Our parliamentarians have spent years squawking about the need to lower grocery prices for consumers. But when push comes to shove, they would rather wage a trade war with yet another ally than give ordinary Canadians a break on the price of dairy products.
New Zealand is taking issue with Canada’s supply-management system for dairy, which fixes the price of milk and can result in the dumping of excess supply to maintain that price.
Specifically, Wellington is escalating a dispute over dairy quotes under the auspices of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The Pacific island country, which is now requesting “mandatory negotiations,” is accusing Canada of violating its obligations under the trade pact and blocking Kiwi dairy exporters’ access to the Canadian market.
“As a matter of principle, the New Zealand Government expects our trade partners to treat our exporters fairly and within the rules of our agreements,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay said last week. “Canada is not doing that in respect to the dairy quotas that were negotiated and agreed with New Zealand.”
Wellington couldn’t give a hoot about Canadian consumers. But I’m cheering them on just the same.
Those dairy quotas – and Ottawa’s failure to honour them – are part of an antiquated system that largely shields Canadian dairy products from foreign competition and results in higher prices for consumers at the grocery store. Although eggs and poultry are also subject to supply management, Wellington’s beef (sorry, I couldn’t resist) centres on dairy.
New Zealand, of course, is hardly the first country to complain about Canada’s dairy supply management. Both the United States and Britain have also taken issue with our protectionist practices. You can bet your bottom dollar that Washington will target supply management again when the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement comes under review in 2026.
These dairy disputes aren’t just damaging Canada’s credibility as a free-trading nation – they’re stifling market competition to the detriment of consumers.
“The Government of Canada will always defend our supply management, firmly standing up for Canada’s dairy industry, farmers and workers and the communities they support,” declared International Trade Minister Mary Ng and Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, in a joint statement.
Too bad it isn’t as politically expedient to stand up for more than 41 million people by removing the barriers to market competition.
By the government’s reckoning, there are less than 10,000 dairy farms left in Canada, with more than three-quarters of them in Ontario and Quebec. Given industry consolidation, supply management is increasingly benefiting “big milk” instead of small, family-run farms. Why should consumers bear the cost of enriching this small group of business owners?
Unfortunately, fecklessness on this issue runs across the political spectrum. Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet is giving the minority Liberal government until Oct. 29 to pass a private member’s bill that would prevent federal negotiators from granting foreigners more tariff-free access to dairy, egg and poultry markets as part of future free-trade deals. If that ill-considered outcome isn’t achieved, the Trudeau government could face a confidence vote.
It is sad – and entirely predictable – that ordinary Canadians can’t count on their legislators to have their backs after putting up with years of inflation. The price of eggs, alone, increased by 5 per cent on a year-over-year basis in September.
There goes my plans to make quiche this weekend.
Kitchen-table economics is exposing the folly of Canada’s supply management system. For far too long, Ottawa has been focused on protecting domestic dairy, egg and poultry producers from foreign competition. They should be empowering consumers to vote with their wallets instead.