Thank you for your question.
Around the world, countries support their agricultural industries in one of two ways: through funding or through regulation. Unfortunately, the funding approach doesn't work. In recent decades, the U.S. and Europe adopted funding-based approaches, subsidizing their producers. These are domestic support policies. To a certain extent, domestic support has the same effect that a tariff does. If a country's producers don't make very much because their products are sold at a low price, but their losses are offset by domestic support measures and subsidies, they can tolerate the situation. When a product fetches a low price in a given country, it makes it difficult for exporters to penetrate the market because they have to charge an even lower price for the same product. To some extent, domestic support constitutes a market entry barrier that is equivalent to a tariff. A tariff is a barrier to market entry. These are two different ways to achieve the same objective. That's what Mr. Groleau was describing earlier.
If you're asking me which country we should align ourselves with, I would definitely say one that uses the regulatory approach. That is the approach we have taken in Canada, and it seeks to duplicate a well-functioning market. A properly functioning market balances supply and demand, eliminating the need to manage oversupply. That's the most common problem encountered by industrial farmers. We're caught between overproduction cycles, which result in very low prices and which we are currently experiencing, and shortage cycles, which result in very high prices. The yo-yo effect produced by rising and decreasing prices leads to resources not being used properly and products not necessarily being available when they should be.
Supply management endeavours to reproduce an effective market, in that it maintains a balance between what is needed to meet market demand and what resources need to be leveraged for production. It cuts down on waste and creates price and income stability. That is the clear choice, and the facts bear that out.