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Canadian politicians of all stripes have been rallying behind supply management since ending it became the United States’ price for renewing NAFTA. Maxime Bernier even lost his position on the Conservative front bench for describing supply management as a cartel.

Supply management is a cartel. Although lawful, it operates like any price-fixing scheme hatched in a smoky back room. What is more, it imposes costs on Canadian consumers that far exceed the costs of all other price fixing combined.

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The basic principle behind supply management and price fixing is the same: a group of producers (in the case of supply management, a marketing board run by agricultural producers) sets the price at which all products must be sold.

Normally, agreements to raise prices above competitive levels reduce demand, leading to excess capacity and an incentive to “cheat.” Price-fixing cartels deal with this by reducing output, allocating markets or customers and by punishing cheaters.