ON MARCH 11, 1934, a small group of dairy farmers met at Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier hotel to form what has become Dairy Farmers of Canada.
Last week at that same hotel, DFC delegates met to celebrate their triumphs (supply management being the most prominent) and to plot strategy on how to continue the lobby to maintain that system of high tariff protection, production controls and cost-based domestic pricing.
The history of DFC is a vivid tale of the effectiveness of a farm lobby that is well financed, disciplined and willing to work all sides of the political fence.
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Gerry Ritz’s good-natured ribbing of Canada’s chief dairy farmer lobbyist last week is a fine illustration of why DFC is considered one of Canada’s most effective farm lobbies, to the frustration of supply management critics.
Not so many years ago, many of the folks who now make up the Conservative government were Reformers with a decidedly suspicious view of supply management and its protectionism.
These Reformers, including Ritz, came to Ottawa to press for freer trade for western exporters and less protectionism that mainly benefited Eastern Canada. In opposition, Reform was no ally of supply management.
But DFC and its members explained and defended the system and gradually, the Reform/Alliance hostility softened. By the time it morphed into the Conservative party and set its sights on winning eastern Canadian seats and power, conversion was complete.
In their rhetoric and in domestic policies, the Conservatives have embraced the supply management system and its proponents.
DFC has embraced them back.
So these former antagonists engaged in friendly putdowns last week when agriculture minister Ritz spoke to the DFC annual policy conference.
The night before, he had attended a banquet celebrating the DFC’s 75th anniversary, where long-serving executive director Richard Doyle introduced past and current presidents. It gave Ritz fodder for a jab at president Jacques Laforge.
“The one point that stood out in my mind when he was introducing Jacques, and I happened to be sitting right there when he did it, he talked about Jacques’ unconventional lobbying style,” the minister said. “I have to tell you, that’s absolutely true. Jacques is to lobbyists what Inspector Clouseau is to detectives.”
The crowd loved the reference to the bumbling detective in the Pink Panther movies. Later, he told the dairy lobby it was “high maintenance, always in my face and I welcome that. But if I’d ever dated a girl who was like that, I’d never come back for a second date.”
When the minister got serious, he told the farmers most of what they wanted to hear. Conservative support is “unwavering,” he said. “We have never ever had a discussion that was anything but solid secure support for supply management.”
Those words may be thrown back at him if the Conservatives are in power when a World Trade Organization deal is signed and supply management is undermined.
But for now, DFC and political reality have done their job. The government defends the system at the risk of alienating former free trading farm lobby allies who resent the defence of high tariffs and to the frustration of Canada’s dairy processors.
DFC has earned its reputation.
