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On Monday, during a noon-hour Ontario CBC Radio show, the host opined that Maxime Bernier lost the Conservative leadership because of his “wild ideas,” as if the libertarian politician from Quebec had been offering conservatives options too crazy to contemplate.

Wild ideas? In the recent history of Canadian politics, no politician has been more grounded or sane.

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You want wild ideas? Here’s one. Let’s take all the milk produced in the country and force it into a national price-control system. The price will be set by a national regulator based in Ottawa. Every person who wants to own a cow will have to buy a government-mandated licence, known as a quota, for $20,000 per cow. Each farm family would have to borrow a million dollars’ worth of quota just for the right to milk cows. Then they’d have to buy the cows — and the farm and the equipment.

Sounds crazy, I know. But get this: The cost of operating the national system will drive the price of milk and cheese and butter up to impossible levels. So we’ll need big, 300-per-cent tariffs at the border to keep out foreign milk products, forcing Canadian consumers to pay ridiculously high prices.