Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz has been invited to the Dairy Farmers of Canada annual policy conference in early February and unless he has a strange political aversion to adoration, he should attend.
The reception will be enthusiastic.
The bond between the dairy farmer lobby and the Conservative government is strong.
And for good reason.
A year ago, minister Chuck Strahl surprised the last DFC policy conference by promising to do what successive Liberal ministers would not do – force Canadian cheese makers to use more Canadian milk and fewer cheap milk protein substitutes in their products. The sales windfall for dairy farmers is estimated at close to $200 million.
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Despite business opposition, Ritz made good on Strahl’s promise when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced the new cheese composition rules Dec. 26.
“I think Mr. Ritz has delivered what Mr. Strahl promised 100 percent and we are happy with that,” DFC president Jacques Laforge said this week.
And when World Trade Organization agriculture negotiations chair Crawford Falconer said in early January that any WTO deal will reduce import protection for supply management, onetime Saskatchewan
grain and ostrich farmer Ritz immediately said that was unacceptable.
“Canada continues to actively oppose any tariff quota expansion or tariff cuts for sensitive products and we continue to take a firm position on this issue,” he said. “This government has shown leadership in supporting supply management and the benefits it delivers to farm families.”
Dairy farmers could hardly be happier.
“Mr. Ritz has been clear when we meet with him that he thinks other countries should be prepared to accommodate our sensitive product sectors since all countries have them,” said Laforge. “We think he is doing as good a job on this issue as he could possibly do.”
But dairy farmers also seem to be in denial and the DFC meeting might be a good venue in which to pose tough questions.
The Conservatives, like their Liberal predecessors, have vowed to fight the good fight and to try to convince other countries to see the justice of Canada’s cause.
However, the reality is that after more than six years, Canada has no real allies in demanding no change in sensitive product protection. So unless talks fail, a reduction in supply management support is inevitable. There are few indications the industry is doing much more than banking on failure.
So a Ritz appearance would be a good opportunity to ask him some uncomfortable questions.
Thanks for your support but if a deal emerges will your government endorse it for the benefit of those sectors that would benefit, yes or no?
If the government embraced such a deal, would it compensate for some or all of the more than $20 billion in quota investment, as it did for the elimination of the Crow rate in 1995?
Is the government actually preparing a Plan B?
In 1993, Progressive Conservative and then Liberal ministers promised on their grandmothers’ bibles that protection of Article 11 was sacred.
Of course, a broader deal that eliminated it ended that promise.
As WTO talks edge toward success or failure, a strategy that assumes other countries will suddenly understand Canada is flawed.
A DFC meeting would be a good place to make that clear.
