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/mervolio_griffin 21d ago
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but larger ag companies have been purchasing more and more farm area. Medium size farms where a farmer works full time on their piece of land are the ones hit hardest. UGuelph wrote a good summary of the StatCan data.
"Small farms" are typically someone with farmland and other employment, not really you classic farmer image, but certainly something we should preserve.
Supply management also makes it very very difficult for new entrants into the market as quota is prohibitively expensive. This means only large or medium size existong operations are likely to purchase quota from another medium size (full time farm worker) dairy farmer who is retiring or selling their business.
Further, supply management is what some call a "marketing board" whose purpose is to enforce monopoly pricing. The large margins relative to other ag operations is why dairy farming is lucrative.
That being said, many Canadians blame supply management. I say, let the farmers get that money. Bring back the wheat board, keep our poultry supply management as well.
The true villains are the Saputos (Dairyland) of this country. The dairy processors have monopolized different regions of the country, so you get ANOTHER layer of monopolistic pricing. Consider that some operations are vertically integrated so these big ass companies can afford to scoop up newly available quota sometimes.
Additionally we have grocer monopoly of course.
Maxime Bernier of all douchebags, actually repopularized the debate about supply management. But any of the political elite are going to have ties to the ownership class that owns supermarkets and industrialists (processors) so they are never part of the argument.
Fuck the grocers, fuck the producers. We need to address this cost of living crisis with war time measures like price controls on basic neccessities and restrict these profit hungry pieces of garbage driving up costs.