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By Morris W. Dorosh

Few if any lobby and pressure groups in Canadian history have had as many politicians in their pocket at one time as the supply management community. Under unprecedented assault for their monopolistic and import-eliminating features, the dairy and poultry boards have all parties foursquare behind them.

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The Liberal party is beholden to rural Quebec voters, where the marketing board system makes families who milk 50 cows affluent. The affinity of Liberals and French residents of the Quebec backwoods predates Confederation, except for times when separatism is in cyclical ascent. Supply management is merely another way to buy off Quebec voters, which is what they seem to expect.

Photo by Jacques Boissinot/CP

But why do the NDP and Conservative parties support this system with such passionate fervour?

Supply management is not free enterprise or entrepreneurship, so how does it fit with the philosophy of an allegedly conservative party? The marketing board system is labour unionism transferred into the country, except that no labour union has unilateral government sanction to do as it pleases. It does not have the support of all Conservative members, but woe unto him who disrespects the party line. Quebec Conservative MP Maxime Bernier, who may be the only conservative in the Conservative caucus, was expelled from Scheer’s shadow cabinet last week after posting on his website the chapter of his forthcoming book that criticizes supply management. He lost to Scheer at last year’s Conservative leadership convention by such a microscopic margin that there should have been a recount or another vote, and in the book Bernier describes how Quebec and Ontario dairy farmers took out impromptu Conservative party memberships specifically to vote against him.