Farmers Make Their Cases for and Against Bloc’s Supply Management Bill

Farmers presented arguments for and against a Bloc Québécois supply management bill at a Senate meeting last week while a deadline set by the Bloc for the Liberal government to declare its position on the bill approaches.
“Canada is an export-oriented nation. In fact, we are the fifth-largest exporter of agricultural products worldwide,” he testified. “We rely on trading relationships with countries around the globe to deliver our products to market, which in turn supports the livelihood of thousands of grain farmers across the country.”
Keith Currie, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, rejected the argument that supply management is a barrier to expanding free trade. He said the merits of Bill C-282 should be “assessed on the basis of its anticipated real-world implications.”
“Canada currently has 15 free-trade agreements with 51 countries, and only the last three agreements required negotiators to provide significant concessions on the supply-managed products,” he said.
“The reality is that Canada needs both supply-managed and export-oriented product producers to succeed, and we have seen for decades that both systems can successfully coexist while continuing to negotiate ambitious and forward-looking trade agreements.”
Currie, noting that his organization represents both supply-managed and non-supply-managed farmers, said the bill has gotten too political.
“I know there’s a lot of noise around this bill, but I think the less that we turn it into a political battle and political football, and get down to what does this bill mean, I think the better off we are all going to be,” he said.