Canadians vote today for members of Parliament, with agriculture playing a minor role at best in elections that will determine if the Conservative Party’s nine-year run is over. The CBC News Poll Tracker says the Liberal Party was backed by 36 percent of voters in the final days before the election, while 31 percent supported the Conservatives and the New Democrats drew 22 percent. To take a majority in the House of Commons and the right to run the government, a party needs to win at least 170 of the 338 seats.
In response to questions by Country Guide, the Conservative Party said it “understands the value of supply management to producers …. We have signed free-trade deals with 39 counties while protecting the three pillars of supply management.” Liberals say they also support supply management while allowing imports into Canada: “It doesn’t have to be any different now.” Canada’s supply-management system limits imports of dairy, eggs and poultry to keep domestic commodity prices up partly due to production limits. The three pillars are import controls, producer pricing and production discipline.
The Toronto Globe and Mail said the Conservative-run government “is promising $4.3 billion in compensation over 15 years to keep farmers ‘whole’ for losses from both the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] and the earlier Canada-European Union trade agreement.” Under TPP, Canada “will open 3.25 percent of its market to duty-free imports — mainly from the United States, Australia and New Zealand.”
“But it resisted calls by the United States and New Zealand to completely dismantle the supply management system, which controls prices and production in Canada,” said the Globe and Mail.
“And Ottawa vowed to clamp down on persistent efforts by importers to creatively skirt the high tariff wall by blending high-duty cheese or chicken into lower-duty processed food products.”