MONTREAL – The dairy farmer lobby, already considered one of the most
powerful in the country, must become even more aggressive in its
efforts to combat complacency within the industry and enemies without,
says the president of Dairy Farmers of Canada.
Leo Bertoia, a Langham, Sask., producer, told the annual DFC policy
conference held here Jan. 22 that many farmers do not realize how
vulnerable their sector is. They have grown up under supply management
stability and assume it will stay.
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“As I look around and go across the country, I feel we have a problem,”
he said.
“The problem is called complacency. We take it for granted, what we
have. In talking to producers, they have the attitude ‘milk in the
tank, money in the bank.’ We cannot become complacent.”
He said the industry must end the current practice of maintaining
separate east and west pools and embrace a national pool. He said
processors are exploiting the two pools to “pit east against west. We
have to get together even more so than we are now.”
Bertoia urged the group to step up efforts and educate the public about
the system’s benefits.
DFC is well-funded to finance promotion and defence campaigns. It
estimates its 2002 revenue at more than $41 million, much of which is
spent on promotion.
Bertoia said it must spend the money and win international and domestic
allies.
Through the eyes of the dairy farmer lobby, the enemies of the system
include:
n* Americans and other foreign countries that would like greater access
to the protected multi-billion dollar domestic dairy product market.
Pressure will be exerted on politicians and trade negotiators to avert
concessions that would open up the Canadian market to subsidized
foreign product.
n* Canadian export sectors, including prairie grain and livestock,
which think that offering foreign traders better access to Canada’s
dairy and poultry markets would lead to greater access to foreign
markets for grain and meat exports.
n* Anti-supply management ideologues like the conservative
Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, which in November released a report
claiming that regulation made Canadian milk much more expensive than
American milk. DFC surveys insist the opposite is true.
n* Food manufacturers and retailers such as the Canadian Restaurant and
Foodservices Association, which wage an annual campaign against higher
industrial milk prices, arguing that it makes Canadian food products
less competitive against cheaper American imports and costs jobs in
Canada’s food sector. DFC spends tens of thousands of dollars every
year trying to counter those arguments.
