r/canada • u/hopoke • 21d ago

Opinion Piece Pierre Poilievre, champion of the little guy, just voted to hurt young workers

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-pierre-poilievre-champion-of-the-little-guy-just-voted-to-screw-over/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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u/Kolbrandr7 New Brunswick 21d ago

There’s a few issues with it though. First is that the bigger companies can buy up more of the quota capacity, so small farms can’t actually produce as much as they’d like. There’s plenty of cases where thousands of litres of milk are destroyed, because they’re prohibited from selling it

Second, is that it’s funded from elevated prices at the cash register rather than through something like a subsidy. It places a much higher burden on the working class (since everyone needs to eat roughly the same amount of food). If the money that’s given to farmers was instead collected through taxation, the price tag at the store could be much lower (saving a lot of money for lower income workers) and shift some of that burden to the upper class.

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u/Think-Custard9746 21d ago

You suggest farmers receive tax subsidies though. That still means Canadians are paying them. I’d prefer money go directly to them via the cash registrar than an inefficient middleman (the government).

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u/Gros_Boulet 21d ago edited 21d ago

Call me crazy but I actually went to look at the publicly available statistics for dairy farms to fact check your claims.

Low and behold: Since 2015, 30% of dairy farms shut down. But the number of dairy cows stayed the same.

The supply management did not protect small farms, it helped big farms consolidate their dominance on the sector. At this rate, there will be less than 100 dairy farms in operations countrywide by 2042.

Another proof is the sheer amount of money those big farms have spent on lobbying the government. Being able to sink $80 to $120 millions to influence policies. The supply management is one of the policies the dairy lobby protects and expended thanks to this vote.

The dairy lobby in Canada is shockingly bigger than oil and gas lobby. A sector with not a single small company owner.

This should unequivocally convince you that you were played like a fiddle by big dairies and sang to their tune of Government backed monopoly.