In an age when trade treaties and arguments of “inevitability” have replaced politics as the coinage of public debate, Canada’s dairy farmer lobby remains one of the few old-fashioned hold-outs.
Much of the farm policy “debate” now consists of governments and lawyers telling farmers what changes are coming and then offering to work with them to find out how that change can best be accommodated.
Dairy Farmers of Canada, in what seems like a throwback to an earlier time, continues to believe that political pressure can change the future. When politicians or corporations or academics tell them detrimental change is coming and resistance would be futile or downright unhelpful, the dairy lobby is as apt as not to ask “why” and then to organize.
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The current battle over whether ice cream companies should be able to displace Canadian cream in their product with imported butteroil is a case in point.
Few issues have so outraged the dairy lobby in recent years.
They believe Revenue Canada’s decision to classify this butteroil/sugar mix as a new product not covered by supply management tariff protections was a bureaucratic error.
They believe it is a violation of the rules which were negotiated in the 1993 world trade talks when the industry lost its ability to enforce quantitative controls over imports. They are demanding Ottawa simply order that the product be reclassified onto a tariff line offering protection.
These demands are met with weary smiles in Ottawa. That’s not the way the world works, they say. We cannot unilaterally change import rules, now that we have trade treaties. Can’t you see that the government’s hands are tied?
But here’s an idea, they say: let’s send this issue to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal for a thorough study of what options exist, OK?
To that decision, the farmer lobby offered only a political finger and vowed not to appear before the CITT.
Instead, they are organizing rallies across the country.
That decision drew some criticism and a plea from agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief last week that they change their minds and appear. To refuse to make the farmer argument would not be serving the interests of the industry, he said.
Many delegates who heard him speak thought he was implying the leaders were not properly serving their members by boycotting the government process.
In reply, as one of their last acts before heading home last week from Vancouver, delegates to the convention reaffirmed their boycott decision.
It was an act of political defiance.
It will be criticized as a political temper tantrum, a refusal by dairy farmers to accept the reality that their protected industry and high prices are the problem, rather than trade rules.
As they were told by processors, protectionism and freer trade don’t mix too well. Be prepared to lower prices or expect more cheap product to be crossing the border.
The DFC likely won’t win this battle.
But at least they believe in going down fighting.
