Cornwall Ontario – I often wonder why Post Media’s Standard Freeholder would allow one of its competitor’s people to write articles for them? I know times are hard, what with another round of buyouts that saw the likes of editor Len Hooper, and long time local fave Greg “Boomer” Peerenboom depart, but this week’s offering by the hyper partisan, and frankly, ignorant numpty, Phil Blancher about the Dairy Supply system that exists in Canada went beyond the pale. (pardon the pun) The newspaper’s comments section on facebook ( no direct story comments allowed on the Freeholder any longer) clearly took the writer and paper to task.
We can’t afford to subsidize dairy farmers and their supply management system. It is time to open the market up, allow competition from within the Canadian dairy system, and abroad. Paying 71 per cent more for dairy is obscene. Supply management is an idea from the 1970’s that needs to go.
What utter tripe. Supply management systems, when they work well, are intelligent and good for all concerned. The problem is that in many cases, when we given the government the steering wheel, they crash into the walls.
In more real terms let’s look at what’s happened with Medicare in Canada where big Pharma and Insurance companies rule at the expense of patient care. I totally get that the government only has so much to spend, but at the same time far too often political and not health care decisions have been made. Worried about upsetting labour when it’s close to election time? Up go the wages and we end up seeing local hospitals like ours no longer have a kitchen and having patient food shipped in. That’s crazy. C Diff? Would we have so many infection issues in hospitals if cleaning staff were paid something closer to the private market?
And those red necky conservatives, of Mr. Blancher’s apparent beliefs simply suggest to privatize health care and services instead of fixing them. This exact issue, of Supply Management might even have cost Maxime Bernier the Conservative Party leadership.
Privatization is not fixing. And neither is dumping a strong well maintained supply system.
While his silly brain used the price of milk as an example, how about comparing other dairy products like cheese and butter?
When was the last time you could buy a pound of Mozzarella for $3.99C stateside? Or a pound of butter for $2.97C? Or a litre of 10% cream or chocolate milk for .99C?
Can we improve our systems across the board? For sure, but we also can improve and protect our farmers so we protect our food supply rather than eating frankegarlic and apples from China.
Farmers feed families. Why wouldn’t you want to support local food over imported food that very little oversight has been directed to? Because if the rules were the same as in Canada in other countries they simply couldn’t be imported here at such low prices.
So let’s focus on improving things rather than capitulating to the lowest hanging fruit regardless of quality, safety, and general health.
What do you think dear CFN viewers? You can post your comments below and it’d be nice to see a few from some farmers that read this humble newspaper.
LOL LOL. What happened to the freeloader – it put its reporters out milking cows for a living. Well don’t be surprised if it literally comes to that point. Newsprint is finished. Whatever is left you have other uses for it but not news – only fake news.
Down the rabbit hole she goes.