It goes without saying that for a Conservative MP, the very concept of government-sanctioned limits on how farmers can market their own crops is wrong.
Witness the longstanding Conservative opposition to the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly. It is an offence to the Conservative concepts of individual choice and economic freedom and must be abolished in favour of “dual market” competition.
The Conservative government has vowed to do that and if the next election produces a Conservative majority, bet the farm that it will.
But as it turns out, a single desk selling monopoly is not always a bad thing if you are a Conservative.
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Witness the Conservative embrace of supply management since 2000 when the party, once hostile to the most heavily regulated and protectionist agricultural system in Canada, began to dream of political gains in voter-rich Ontario and Quebec where supply management is prevalent and popular.
Supply management, which forces dairy, poultry and egg producers to sell through a central desk and charges them millions of dollars for the right to produce while protecting the system behind massive import barriers, is now a great Conservative favourite.
Why, these Conservatives will protect supply management to the point of alienating free traders at World Trade Organization talks by “going to the wall” to make sure 300 percent dairy over-quota tariffs are not reduced.
How is this possible? What makes one farmer sales monopoly the saviour of farmers and another the economic and freedom-of-choice anti-Christ?
For those of you with your hand up ready to shout out the answer “politics,” put your hands down. The Conservatives have an answer on how that circle can be squared.
It was first road-tested during the election in January by then-Conservative agriculture critic Diane Finley and then dusted off last week by Saskatchewan Conservative and agriculture parliamentary secretary David Anderson to explain why the Conservatives are not in a contradictory position.
It turns out that the wheat board monopoly is bad because, well, it’s a monopoly.
“It’s involuntary,” Anderson explained. “If you grow wheat in our part of the world, you have no choice of whether you are involved in it or not.”
Contrast that with supply management which is “voluntary,” he said.
“People can buy into it. They have the choice of participating or not.”
In fact, supply management is voluntary the way the Canadian Wheat Board is
voluntary.
If you don’t want to be part of the wheat board monopoly as a Saskatchewan farmer, you don’t grow wheat, malting barley, or barley for export. If you don’t want to be part of the Dairy Farmers of Saskatchewan protected production and marketing monopoly, you don’t become a dairy farmer.
The Conservatives are on more solid ground when they note that supply management is broadly supported by its farmers because it guarantees them prices while the CWB monopoly is controversial with many farmer critics forced to be part of it.
But to highlight that argument would be to suggest the opposition to single desk is a political numbers game and surely, it’s based on the principle of opposing monopolies.
Isn’t it?
