Yes. I am well aware of this. I just find it hard to believe that dairy, poultry, and eggs are some special snowflake type of farm that requires the quota and supply chain management, while every other type of farm, we can manage with direct subsidies.

For reference, there are about 190k farms in Canada, 8% of those farms are dairy, poultry, and eggs whose viability is ensured with supply chain management. The other 92% of farms, are managed with direct government assistance (AgriStability, AgriInsurance, AgriInvest, and AgriRecovery). The latter costs the government $1.5-$2 billion most years. While the recent report on supply chain managed farms suggests the cost born by Canadians to be around $10 billion. Even if that number is off by an order of magnitude, we're looking at $1 billion for 8% of farms, and $1.5-$2 billion for the other 92% of farms.

All I'm saying is it seems like the solution to help ensure viability in dairy, egg, and poultry farming is wildly inefficient and merits a look from first principles. Is there a solution to achieve the same outcome at a lower cost? The world has changed drastically since the policies were implemented in the 1970s.

I admit I am far from an expert, but I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading about this shit out of curiosity in the past couple days. Broke my brain when I saw the numbers around the costs born by canadians in the checkout aisle due to supply chain management.

Yeah, I know that's a colossal elephant to deal with. I mean, I would hope that whatever reforms could lower costs enough that if you did a model similar to Australia, and had a temporary levy to pay for the buyout, the end cost to consumers, even with the levy, was lower prices than prior to the change. That was the case in Australia.

And I know nothing about the market, but I can't imagine it's overly liquid, the fact that all farmers would receive cash for their quota, would definitely be attractive to most. It's already heavily financialized and borrowed against.

And then, you could even do something like NZ did where all the dairy farmers got together and created a coop for processing, NZ is now the largest exporter of dairy in the world! If some of the quota levy went to getting this off the ground, you'd help the farmers retain a bigger piece of the pie with vertical integration of the supply chain. And, hopefully also compete globally and become net exporters, increasing the size of the pie.

I dunno, I have no idea what the fucking solution is, but after spending a bunch of time in the weeds of this shit over the past couple days, I am like, we have created a monster, this can't be the most effective way to achieve the underlying goals of the program.

It's not wild to imagine Canada wants to protect a domestic food producing industry.

Same how all countries, including the US, heavily subsidize and protect their agricultural sector.

I'd call this strategic, not political (although ofc it involves lobbying, again, like in every other country including the US)

I don't really know how the discount is built into the price, but it's a result of the fact that only about 10% of the oil Canada produces can make it to a port to be sold to non-US buyers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Canadian_Select

Sorry, I did. I thought you were accusing American companies (which they can be) of being oligarchies. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve been doing the lord’s work defending the United States a bit here and trying to clear up confusion that others have with respect to trade.