Liberal Party Of Canada: Arbitrary Power

Supply Management Dept: When even a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, Martha Hall Findlay, is promising to sweep away supply management because it is in effect a regressive tax on food that harms low-income consumers to benefit well-off farmers, you know that supply management is on its last legs, according to Vancouver Sun. All that is damning enough. But few people understand the arbitrary power that supply management confers to harm law-abiding businesses simply carrying on their trade. Like flies to honey, the power to rig the market that supply management rep-resents draws big producers and processors together in an unholy alliance to exploit their power at the expense of everyone else and time to call foul - or maybe that should be fowl - on the arbitrary power that agricultural supply management grants to powerful interests to reward their friends and punish their opponents. Supply management restricts both domestic production through quotas and licences and international imports through tariffs , of things like milk, cheese, eggs and chicken, allowing producers to control prices by manipulating supply. Virtually every independent observer agrees Canada is losing influence in international trade negotiations because of Ottawa's stubborn insistence on defending supply management. Our potential trading partners in arrangements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership find unacceptable that Canada slaps tariffs i.e. taxes of 200 to 300 per cent on their exports to this country of dairy, eggs, poultry, etc. to protect supply management. They're right to be outraged. We should be seeking markets in their countries, just as they seek markets in ours. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.