I read with interest the position of Wellington-Halton Hills MP Michael Chong who is running for Leader of the Conservative Party.
There has been much discussion lately about “fake news”, which used to be called lying or propaganda. To help your readers discern the truth, I wish to correct the record and expose the misleading statements.
There is no doubt that the 400 Supply Management (“SM”) farms in Wellington County are important.
However, that does not mean the thousands of non-SM farms, or the 116,000 citizens of Wellington-Halton Hills are second-class citizens.
SM farms (dairy, chicken, turkey, eggs) are just 8% of all Canadian farms, but SM farmers are the best paid of all Canadian farmers, earning 21% more than non-SM farmers.
SM farmers and their deep pockets unfairly compete against all non-SM farmers for the same limited resources in farming (eg. farmland, tractors, animal feeds, Vets, Ag. specialists, etc.).
SM is bad for all non-SM farmers. SM is also bad for Canadian consumers.
Politicians and SM lobbyists often justify SM by quoting spurious, biased statistic that the average Canadian has earned enough money by Feb. 14 to buy all their food for a year. What they don’t tell you is that “average” is calculated by adding up all the wages of all Canadians, including billionaires. That creates a misleading, biased statistic that is used as a weapon against all those living at the Low Income Cutoff (ie. poverty end) of that average income.
In Dec. 2015, the Food Institute at the University of Guelph announced that food inflation in Canada is the highest in the world, topping 4.1% in 2015. It will be more of the same for the near future.
While all food prices are on the rise, the SM commodities (ie. chicken, turkey, eggs, and all dairy products) are 37% to 300% more expensive in Canada than the prices paid by most of the Western world. The price gouging of Canadian consumers is designed into the SM system.
For example, for someone earning Ontario Minimum Wage between 1995 and 2005, the affordability of chicken dropped 31.7%. Since chicken has historically been the cheapest meat available, if you can’t afford chicken, you are forced to become a vegetarian.
Health Canada reports that 7.6% of Canadians can’t afford the food they need to feed their families. In the North, rural areas, and on First Nation reserves, 30% to 75% of families have food insecurity. For example, in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut a whole chicken sells for $80 to $90, 4 to 5 times the price paid in Toronto ON, making SM chicken unaffordable by most families.
Two thirds of Canadian deaths are caused or contributed to by poor diets or poor nutrition. Getting rid of SM will help make better, more nutritious foods available for all Canadians. Now is the time to get rid of SM, before we have food riots, mass starvation, or rising epidemics of bad health.
For too long, Supply Management’s multi-millionaires and their talented, highly paid lobbyists have had a reserved place at the feed trough. Politicians have fallen over each other to continuously refill that SM feed trough with the very best quality and quantity that taxpayers money could buy.
Canada’s Supply Management System for chicken, turkey, eggs, and dairy is a dysfunctional, inefficient, ineffective, and mediocre tyranny imposed on 35 million Canadians by just 17,000 farmers, their paid lobbyists, and political friends.
The 17,000 SM farmers who “own” the Supply Management system are all multi-millionaires. They became multi-millionaires by stealing away the rights and freedoms of consumers and all other non-SM farmers.
I am a Small Flock Poultry farmer (ie. I’m a non-quota, non-SM chicken farmer). The 60,000 or so small flock poultry farmers in Canada is one group that suffers under the despotic control of the SM system for chicken, so that 2,700 SM chicken farmers (just 4.3% of all chicken farmers in Canada) can rule the roost. I call it “Chicken Apartheid”. See our Blog http://canadiansmallflockers.blogspot.ca for the scary details.
Under SM, Chicken Apartheid has been in Canada for more than 4 decades. SM lobbyists and their propaganda press releases say SM “protects” Canada’s family farms. However, the truth is opposite of what SM lobbyists claim. For example, from 1966-2011 (the full reign of SM for chicken), 88% of Canada’s chicken farms have disappeared. The SM chicken farms that are still here are now huge CAFO chicken factories owned by multi-millionaires.
Similarly sad statistics exist for the other 3 tentacles of the SM beast (ie. dairy, eggs, and turkey).
Glenn Black, President
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada http://canadiansmallflockers.blogspot.ca
Glenn Black