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“Higher dairy and poultry prices would therefore impose a proportionally larger penalty on households that spend more of their incomes on food,” it states.

Families with kids spend, on average, over $1,200 a year on supply-managed groceries; those without about $774. According to the authors that means, “Canada’s supply-managed system imposes an implicit tax on the poorest households with children that ranges from $466 to $592 per year.”

That means, if you calculate the extra cost supply management tacks on relative to annual income, low-income families pay an “implicit tax” of 2.4% each year

The implicit tax rate of this policy is about five times higher on the lowest-income households

The richest pay just under 0.5%, the authors state.

That’s what makes supply management a “regressive” as opposed to “progressive” tax, explained Ryan Cardwell, one of the study’s authors. The more money you make the more you pay in relative taxes, but the opposite is true when calculating the impact of supply management on grocery bills (the study did not include spending on restaurant and take-out food).

“The implicit tax rate of this policy is about five times higher on the lowest-income households,” the agricultural economics associate professor at the University of Manitoba said.

With two major free-trade deals still being hammered out – one with the European Union that would allow in a bit more of their cheese and the Trans Pacific Partnership – the authors wanted to highlight supply management’s cost while our governments are batting for it around the table. And, in an election year where every party says they want to cut costs for the middle class, Cardwell wanted to know what burden the system placed on families.