Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is suggesting it is time Canadians give up the supply management system.
In a recent keynote speech at CropConnect in Winnipeg he said dismantling the system would create a boom for food processors and provide more affordable food for consumers.
At the same time Mulroney did suggest that farmers would need to be offered a healthy compensation package as part of the changeover.
These are not particularly new ideas, neither is the offered position when one considers the political leanings of the former Conservative leader. The Conservative in whatever manifestation they have taken at the federal level in Canada have never been particularly supportive of supply management.
The concept of the dismantling of the supply management sector leading to lower food costs is appealing, at least on the surface.
Of course we have often seen potential cost savings arise which never quite get to the consumer, the savings seeming to be lost somewhere in the supply chain long before getting to the till at the store where the consumer benefits.
Of course a question that one might want to ask which might not be popular, is if our food is too costly now. Certainly a trip to the supermarket each week burns through a considerable amount of income. But as I have noted here before when one eliminates the dish soap, after shave, tea towels, hockey magazines, cat food, water softener salt, garbage bags, junk food, and all the other non-food items in the bags one carries to the car, the actual food cost is far less than most immediately assume.
There is also something about a system which benefits consumers only by reducing the amount of money going to the primary producer of the food which should rub us all a bit uncomfortably.
It is great to have reasonably priced food, but one would hope society also wants to see local producers able to make a reasonable living producing that food.
There is also the very real concern we should have in terms of food security.
The system is increasingly geared to be able to trace food from the table to the source farm should any food safety issue arise. That traceability becomes far more difficult and frankly suspect, when crossing federal borders.
And there is also the potential for border closures, higher costs and less control of standards moving forward. In the United States at present there is a blustering wild card president whose next move on any front is at best a guess. We have seen him reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement with the outcome of that effort far from clear at present.
Trump is also blustering about massive new tariffs such as steel and aluminum.
What might come next is unknown, but becoming more reliant on foreign sources for key food stuffs such as dairy, cheese and poultry might seem questionable given the current trade uncertainty Trump brings.
Any change to supply managed systems will need to be carefully mapped out before taking a step from which there will be little chance of recovery if it proves to offer less than expected in terms of returns.
Calvin Daniels is Editor with Yorkton This Week.
