Canadian dairy farmers are losing tens of millions of dollars in
domestic market sales each year because of a leaky border that lets
imported dairy products slip through supply management protections, the
dairy farmer lobby told Liberal MPs last week.
And Langham, Sask., farmer Leo Bertoia, president of Dairy Farmers of
Canada, figures MPs got the message.
“We heard ministers say they support supply management and they want to
sit down with us to work this out,” he said in an Aug. 22 interview
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from his farm.
“I think they were shocked by what we told them. We left thinking we
had been listened to.”
Bertoia led approximately 1,500 dairy farmers in a march through
Chicoutimi, Que., on Aug. 20 as the Liberal caucus met up the street.
The group also held an outdoor rally, and sent representatives to meet
with the party’s rural caucus, including agriculture minister Lyle
Vanclief and international trade minister Pierre Pettigrew.
“The government has said many times that it supports supply
management,” Bertoia said at the rally. “We came here to ask elected
officials to make good on their words and work with the industry to
stop the erosion of the system.”
The issue is the ability of importers to design products that get
around Canadian supply management restrictions, which don’t apply to
products containing less than 51 percent dairy content. Under
international trade rules, just five percent of the domestic dairy
market is open to imports.
The greatest example of border leak is the import of cheap butteroil as
a substitute for Canadian cream in lower-grade brands of ice cream. It
is imported in a mixture, mainly from the United States, that makes it
just 49 percent of the product.
Despite years of dairy farmer pressure, the federal government has
refused to create a new tariff line that would control imports of these
“designer” butteroil products.
“Twenty-five percent of ice cream now made in Canada uses butteroil,”
Bertoia said.
“That displaces the entire production (of cream) from a province like
Saskatchewan. I think they (the Liberals) were shocked by that.”
The dairy group calculates that the rapidly escalating import of
uncontrolled dairy products displaced more than $80 million of domestic
milk sales in 2000-01 and the cost will rise to $250 million or more a
year.
The latest import threat is pizza chips from the U.S. that contain less
than 49 percent shredded cheese, allowing them across the border.
Bertoia noted that the American limit on dairy product content before
import restrictions apply is 10 percent, while Canada maintains a 49
percent trigger.
