by SUSAN MANN
Dairy Farmers of Canada says the impact to the country’s dairy industry of the cheese provisions in Canada’s trade deal with the European Union amounts to a loss of milk production the equivalent to Nova Scotia’s.
By the numbers, it’s nearly $150 million a year or a 2.2 per cent cut in farm quota for Canada’s 12,500 dairy producers, states presentation notes by Wally Smith, Dairy Farmers president.
Smith’s Nov. 7 presentation to the federal Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food in Ottawa also included requests for the federal government to work with the country’s dairy industry to ensure its stability and to ensure the deal’s impact on dairy farmers be “fully mitigated.”
The EU’s access will total 31,971 tonnes or 7.5 per cent of the Canadian cheese market. Imports from all countries will jump to nine per cent of the total Canadian cheese market from five per cent.
In total, the estimated impact to dairy farmers and cheese makers is a domestic market loss valued at $300 million annually, Dairy Farmers says.
Standing committee chair Bev Shipley, the MP for Lambton, Kent, Middlesex, says the committee is holding hearings on the trade deal. It will be hearing from agricultural commodity organizations, processors and agriculture groups from across the country up until Christmas. A report will be released after the presentations are done. After the Christmas break the committee “would then deal with that report.”
Shipley, who once owned a purebred dairy operation, says significant growth in domestic consumer demand for specialty cheeses will offset the domestic industry’s market loss. He says demand has been growing by 8,000 tonnes a year and notes an artisan cheese maker, who testified on the same day as Dairy Farmers of Canada, talked about the growth and the opportunity it presents.
Dairy farmers “will in the end see it as an opportunity, also,” he says. Moreover, the agreement includes a provision to evaluate the deal at the end of the transition time. “If there is deemed to be a negative impact there will be some compensation for it. It’s actually a great protection for them.”
Just because European specialty cheese will be allowed to come in “doesn’t mean it has to,” Shipley says. “We’ve got great products and we have great dairy farmers. I think they have a great opportunity to take up a majority of that domestic growth in Canada.”
Standing committee member MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau of the Berthier-Maskinongé riding in Quebec says 60 to 70 per cent of cheeses are made in Quebec. Brosseau agrees the deal’s impact on dairy farmers is more significant than has been reported and “we’re still waiting for the details. It would be a few months to a year before we have all the details made public.”
Brosseau, the deputy agriculture critic for the NDP, says in addition to waiting for more details, they’re looking to the government to outline “a plan for our farmers that will be impacted.”
She says she is hearing a lot of concern from Quebec dairy farmers about the deal “because they weren’t expecting this. They were expecting to have some give but” the actual amount of access given to the European Union was a big shock to them.
Shipley says the Canada-EU trade deal is the most comprehensive agreement that Canada has ever signed in history. It will be about two to seven years before the deal is fully implemented. The implementation will start happening after legal experts review the deal and it is translated into 24 languages. Both of those should take about two years and then there’s likely to be a five-year implementation period.
“There’s quite a transition of time,” he says. BF
Comments
After CETA is implemented, Canadian dairy farmers will still control over 90% of the Canadian dairy market, and will still be able to charge rip-off prices, like the 87% premium forced on non-pizza makers of mozzarella cheese, while doing so.
In addition, while dairy farmers bemoan the potential loss in sales, they completely ignore the actual sales already lost, firstly because of cross-border shopping, estimated by some to represent up to 5% of total Canadian consumption, and secondly because of declining overall consumption in the past several decades due to rip-off pricing at the farm gate.
Finally, anyone with even the most-modest understanding of economics knows that the estimated costs to the dairy industry of $300 million annually, will easily be offset by the increased benefits accruing to hog and livestock farmers.
And then dairy and poultry farmers still can't understand why supply management is not well-liked, and will not be missed.
Stephen Thompso, Clinton ON
l think your 5% is greatly exaggerated to the same extent your "increased benefits" to Pork and Beef farmers may be.Just about every Non-Supply Management farmer l have talked to would flush the CETA deal right down the toilet if it meant making COOL go away..and anyone that says the EU deal makes up for the COOL loses is dreaming in techncolor for sure!..certainly a Politician.
I can't find the source at the moment, but I believe the 5% loss in market share due to cross-border shopping came from within SM5 - I recall reading this figure in an article in a farm paper several years ago. The thing is nobody knows, and it's likely to be far-higher than anyone suspects.
For example, a friend told me today that he stayed at resort in southern Quebec last weekend, and the resort offers day-trips to its guests to see scenery in the US. The proprietors of the resort told my friend that they don't charge for these trips because they use these trips to bring back for the resort's kitchen, as much dairy and poultry products as the number of people on the bus will allow them to bring back. The people on the bus, of course, don't realize that they are being used as "mules", and don't care because they're getting a free trip, and, what's even better, it's even more of a sharp stick gleefully, and completly-legally, poked in the eye of greedy dairy farmers.
In addition, I believe that in southern BC, the 5% figure is substantially-less than reality because BC farmers have fallen all over themselves to complain - I mean, really, when, as reported not long ago, one store in a US border town sold so much milk to Canadians, they had a seperate cash register just for Canadian dollars.
The point is that dairy farmers are whining about a potential loss in sales of 5% due to CETA, yet are ignoring far-greater actual loss in sales every day due to cross-border shopping, both by individuals, and by businesses who pack buses to go to the US on day trips, just to get their dairy and poultry products at the right price.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Most of the people in Supply Management know that the loss of cross-border market share has varied over the years depending on the Dollar and the price of Milk/chicken in the US, it could be 5% at times and it could be 0% at others.The Canadian Milk Industry has made several comparisons over the years.Whatever the loss may be, it will be absorbed.However the real loss comes from the small grocery/convenience stores next to the US border trying to compete with the US prices on just about everything not only Milk and Chicken.
Articule in the K-W record about consumers running across the border for 35% cheaper tires,that sure will not make a big dent in the Tire Distributors up here but it does hurt the small Canadain sevice centres next to the border trying to sell tires.One garage owner quoted several reasons for the differential,starting with the wages.
l wonder if consumers in this province would approve if we rolled back the minimum wage from $10. to New York's $7.25 if it meant cheaper Tires..
..l didn't think so!
I believe a lot of the us farm budget is a direct subsidy to the low wage earner in the form of food stamps
Shhhhhhhh, they don't call it a subsidy down there.The US farm bill could be somewhere between 700-900 billion over 10 years but you will be hard pressed to find the "S" word anywhere!
"l wonder if consumers in this province would approve if we rolled back the minimum wage from $10. to New York's $7.25 if it meant cheaper Tires.."
You've got your figures wrong. In the case of SM it would be more like rolling the minimum wage back to $35/hr from 40$/hr.
Holy Cow, Greedy dairy Farmers. I think someone must not look out at the real picture in the farming community. There,s greedy people in all the farming sector not just dairy, ones that figure he or she should have thousands of acres of land and have every piece of land around and not around them. Some will go to a land owner and high ball the one that is renting now out and it doesn,t have to be just a SM farmer. Guess the companies see the free buses that haul people to the casinos and they figure when people see free they will travel to the end of the Earth and say its FREE , doesn,t matter if you lose your shirt in the end or not and costing you more. I go down a couple times a year to see if there,s anything different to buy but no way would I drive down every week to buy the food I need , and I don,t bring any dairy or poultry products back. When we go into a grocery to look at the prices I don,t see any deals there and lots are way more than up here . Bus company making money and the store is not losing so who,s paying for that FREE bus in the end (you the FREE rider ) .
"So apparently my money that I decide to spend on cheese is actually their money". Brian Liley of Sun News.
I couldn't agree more. SM is an attempt to control "my" money and funnel it into the pockets of some specific...and rich farmers.
No wonder cross border shopping is so rampant.
42% of my wages go to taxes.
"My" money goes to health care, education, policing, and on and on, with people "protected" by union wages.
Why can't a cuban doctor work here at cuban wages? Why should "my" money go into a system that protects Ontario "wages"?
Brian Lily needs to look at himself first. His wage is protected too. If he wants farmers incomes going to a open market he better be prepared to getting a wage at a open market also.
Lily cant have it both ways.
Health and education professionals get to where they are because of their own initiative and merit, and unlike in the supply management aristocracy, their children can't inherit their jobs.
Furthermore, unlike with the products produced by supply management, poor people don't have to pay a disproportionate percentage of their income for health care, education, and safety.
In addition, unlike in supply management where consumers pay all of the subsidies received by dairy and poultry farmers, rich people, including corporations, pay their proportionate share of the costs of education and health care.
The people wanting it both ways are, as always, supply managed farmers so desperate to constipate the economy by keeping their unearned entitlements, that they'll grasp at any straws, however irrelevant, however illogical, however unsound, and however desperate to shoot the messenger, these "straws" might be.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Perhaps Stephen is right. Think of all the money we would save if we got rid of all things protectionist. End SM and unions. Lets open the teaching jobs internationally and all teaching jobs would be up for bids on contracts to qualified teachers. Lets not stop there. How about all gov jobs. After all there wages are 100% subsidized. Just a thought.
How is Brian Liley's wage protected? Last I heard a news agency employee has to either perform or step aside. That sure sounds like the open market to me.`
Boasting that you are a taxpayer should be done with disclosure. Considering that well under 50% percent of Canadians are taxpayers one must wonder about the credibility of some comments made on this site. In addition, if you truly are a taxpayer, and you are a supply managed farmer, those taxes you paid are in large part because of your legislated ability to take far more than market value from consumers, and would have otherwise been paid by them into the tax cofers. Raube Beuerman
The supply management lobby always ignores, subverts, and/or twists, the basic economic truth which is that rich individuals and corporations pay a lot of income tax, but rich individuals don't consume a lot more food than poor people, and corporations don't consume any food at all.
Our income tax system is based on a "progressive" model which is that the more money you make, the more tax, as a percentage of your income, that you pay - our supply management system, however, is based on a "regressive" model which is that the less money you make, the more you pay, as a percentage of your income, for the products produced by supply management.
Therefore, as an instrument of sound economic policy, and sound public policy, if farmers are to merit any support, it should be transferred to them from proceeds received from the "progressive" income tax system, rather than in the form of a "regressive" consumption tax disproportionately funded by those who can least afford to pay it.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Casino's biggest clients are the low-income people who can least afford to lose,you can almost picture them walking out of Rama..complaining about the high cost of milk!
Taking cheap shots against a small segment of Canada's millions of poor people to defend the aristocratic entitlement of fewer than 15,000 quota-owning farmers, is distasteful, arrogant, offensive, and nothing more than grasping at straws by these farmers.
It's statements like this which infuriate people who do have a sense of public responsibility, and it is this type of belief on the part of quota owners, and those who pander to them, which propels people to get rid of the cancer of supply management, and the dismissive and patronizing attitudes of those in it.
More to the point, the sooner Canada's quota-owning farmers are reduced to the point where their sole source of income is driving school buses part-time, the better off Canada, and especially Canadian agriculture, will be.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
It is hard to believe that a "former farmer now fulltime forum poster" would suggest that Canada would be better off if our hard working talented dairy farmers became "hard part-time school bus drivers".....where is the logic in that???
Maybe you need to give us a break and yourself and step away from daily rant against the way things are done in Canada
G Kimble
the fact that Market Place the other night had across border price comparisons showing how so many things are cheaper south of the border . Some by as much as 50% . Some even products that are made here in Canada .
There is also a new SM in this country . It is the automotive industry . USA dealers are not allowed to sell new cars to Canadians or they will loose their dealership . SOO much for NAFTA and FREE TRADE !!
But some are only concerned about milk and trying to expand the lowest income group in the country .
Comment modified by editor
Who takes constant cheap shots against a small segment of Canada's population?
Dairy farmers are a minority group and you constantly degrade that minority.
Exactly whose market value are you talking about? Are your talking Canadian market value or US value or maybe you're talking about Mexican value or Swedish? When l buy a Lazy boy chair from the local furniture store l pay for it at Canadian value, the same goes for a car,boat,groceries, gas..etc etc.When l get my car fixed and the garage charges me $65/hr labour and l complain that it would cost me half that across the border..you know where he will tell me to go!!
l realize what you are insinuating but you have to realize what Country we live in,we are not the 51st State ..yet.
When the price is determined by a board of producers that consists of those producers in that particular market, who are then protected by the government in what they call "the three pillars of supply management", that is not the true market price. The 'correct' price is the price the market is willing to pay in a subsidy and tarriff free environment.
Raube Beuerman
By your logic then, my tax money should not go to the protected wages of doctors, nurses and teacher. All those wages are 100% subsidized.
I am not willing to pay for high unions wages but mexican teachers cann't work here earning mexican wages. Tariff free? Nope.
No such thing as market pricing with unionized workers. But people get mad when they think they might have to pay 30 cents more for domestic milk.
If you want to save money go after the big unions that protect public employees! Thats where your real savings are. Bring our taxes down.
1.) Teachers, doctors and nurses wages are not subsidized, you have a very poor understanding of how the system works. 2.) Anyone from any corner of this planet can come here and get a job teaching as long as he/she has the right educational qualifications. There are no tariffs on teachers. 3.) I agree with you on the union statements, but SM and unions are identical in that a select group of people are propped up at the expense of those who are not unionized or in SM. Raube Beuerman
1.) Teachers, doctors and nurses wages are not subsidized.
Yes they are. There wage is 100% tax payer subsidized. The tariff on teachers is the fact a mexican teacher cannot teach in Ontario and be paid at mexican standards. A mexican teacher working in Ontario will get a Ontario wage. That wage is paid by the tax payers. What part dont you understand about that?
The definition of subsidy is 'a sum of money granted by the state or public body to keep the price of a commodity or service low'. So by that, they are not subsidized. Of course a 100% of teachers wages come from taxpayer money, that is why it is called 'public education', and I would bet that some teachers who teach in private schools may even make more than public school teachers. Also, of course a mexican school teacher that QUALIFIES to teach in Ontario would get an Ontario wage. Raube Beuerman
Thanks for proving my point.
A subsidy usually removes some type of burden, often considered to be in the "interest of the public".
Another word for subsidy is stipend. Stipend is a wage.
Teachers receive 100% subsidy from tax payers.
The problem is the SUBSIDY is now considered the burden because our taxes, at all levels, in all forms, are too high.
We have created a bigger burden that is suppose to relieve us of a burden.
If there is true free trade without barriers, a mexican teacher should be allowed to teach in Ontario at mexican wage rates.
A stipend and subsidy are not the same by definition. Yet you claim they are same? Also, are you sure our taxes are too high. The goverment reduced the GST to 6%, and then it reduced it again to 5%. Raube Beuerman
Yup. Those words all have the same meaning.
Taxes too high? Municipal taxes nearly quadrupled in 10 years on farm land, driver licenses, payroll deductions, hunting, fishing, health tax, boat licenses, energy taxes, eye exams, tire taxes, fast food tax, excise, disposal tax on electronics, compliance forms with fees, permits of all kinds, vehicle tax, land transfer, distribution tax, probate, liquor tax, telecommunication taxes, cost-recovery rates, new court fees, users fees, retirement charge on hydro, tax on fuel tax, the list is to long.
that last comment left me feeling like i just got off an amusement ride all dazed and confused lol
Sean McGivern
You are right Sean, this anonymous poster gave me my monday laugh. Did you see his/her latest post. Now claiming a subsidy, wage and stipend are all the same. The logic many anonymous posters promote here is comparable to that of the former Soviet Union. Raube Beuerman
Had a conversation about the free lighting up grades from the promo post card I got in the mail from Ontario Hydro . After much listening to the nice ladt on the other end of the phone telling me it was free I explained to her that nothing is free . These supposed free upgrades are paid for by people paying their hydro bills and tax payers paying taxes . The worst part in all of this is that once there is a subsidy put in place the manufacturer and retailers jack the price up because they want to make a bigger profit and have the mindset that the increase is not affecting the consumer since it is a Gov program .
Two program examples are EFP and the price a contractor now charges to do a project . The other is green energy . You can buy 10 kw solar panels for $7500 . But how many paid $75,000.00 or more to get one under the GEA .
I remembr years ago when the gov had a manure storage grant . The price of the cement went up the amount of the grant dollars . We would be better served if gov would keep its hand out of things .
Then how would you explain the fact that pork has recieved numorous subsidy checks over the years when prices were low ? You are not making sense here .
That is an example of a business that is, at times, subsidized. I never said that it was not. Teachers though, are not a subsidized group. Their entire pay comes from taxpayers, as it should. Raube Beuerman
Reply = Reply = Nothing. Couple of people still think the worst bunch of people on this earth is SM farmers , well they could be right . You read all the papers and everyone else is so for everyone else and will work for nothing and give everything they make to the taxman , big corps. and all the government workers so they can live the good life and you can sit at home eating bread and water and freezing your butt off. Well I for one isn,t a SM farmer and yes the price of SM food is high but what else isn,t here in Canada, and yes we are not loaded down with 99% of its people willing to work for nothing and in the end give what little they make to the rich. But I will Reply and maybe I won,t get a big reply saying its your duty to work for nothing and give what,s life so few elite can work very little or not at all nad enjoy the good life.
We should give to big corps in the form of becoming shareholders. The big corps that all too many people complain about are publicly traded companies that anyone can own shares in to take part in their profits. We should be thankful we have them to put in investment vehicles like an RESP, RRSP and TFSA. Since the year 1900, the corporate world has been generous enough to give us an annual return of over 9%. Raube Beuerman
If you come across a Country with a subsidy and tariff free environment let us all know so we can move there and be so much happier!..as long as they have good health care,quality food and nice warm beaches.
Whether there will be a impact on Dairy farmers or not, there should be no doubt that this issue will be used in the next election,especially since it impacts Quebec cheese makers the most.Combine it and the Billions that have been handed out in Alberta the last while and you will see why some people are expecting a return to the old days with the Conservatives pretty much considering the Province of Quebec a political write-off.
Even in Quebec, there are hog and livestock farmers whose votes for the Tories for getting CETA done will vastly-outnumber the dissident dairy farmers who object. Simply stated, CETA will win more votes than it will lose, even in Quebec.
Dairy farmers, even in Quebec, haven't figured out that their days of running the country, are over.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
if you could send
Euorpen farmers to Canada 1800
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