Canada’s 25-year-old supply-management system is on the cusp of a revolution in which some basic assumptions of its creation will be challenged and changed, says the chair of the federal council that oversees supply management.
It is time for marketing boards, created to service a domestic market, to switch their business mindset from protection and rules to expansion and exports.
The future, said National Farm Products Council chair Cynthia Currie, is in expansion through exports and squeezing costs out of the system to make Canadian dairy and poultry products more competitive.
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High protective tariffs and cost-of-production pricing may not be part of the future.
“What the rules will be in 2005 (after trade talks) is less important than how the industry can expand,” she said. “That’s the bottom line. If indeed tariffs do decline over the next 10 or 15 years, are we vibrant and prepared to take on the competition?”
She is talking about a revolution in supply management, away from tight regulation toward more “flexibility” and “orderly marketing.”
The council was established more than two decades ago in part to settle disputes between supply-management boards, representing farmers, and their customers.
Currie said she was appointed almost a year ago with a government order to rejuvenate the council and she is doing that by downplaying council’s role as a dispute-settlement forum and emphasizing its role as a catalyst to help supply management evolve.
The NFPC is arranging discussions within the industry on how it can become more competitive in the face of more import competition and export opportunities.
“I think we have to sit around the table and talk about how we can drive costs out so that the industry becomes more competitive and the profitability of both the producer and the processor is recognized,” she said.
“There is no point in trying to stay in business if a profit is not there.”
The council hopes by spring to develop cost-of-production guidelines that agencies and marketing boards can use as they negotiate prices with processors or retailers.
