Evidence of meeting #5 for International Trade in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was agreement.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you.
Mr. Vermeer, I know we heard earlier from my Liberal colleague, Mr. Arya, that Canadians are paying high prices for milk. I think the evidence suggests otherwise, that Canadians pay a fair market price for their milk. The difference is that we're able to support our producers doing it, and where other people are paying comparable prices, they're not necessarily able to support an industry in the way that Canada has been able to do.
He also talked about opening up export markets. What I find odd, if you take milk, for example, is that the world has a number of countries with systems that produce massive quantities of milk, to the point where, in some cases, producers can't stay in business. I understand that for Canada, where we're particularly good at growing grain, for instance, that's a natural export market, because Canadians aren't going to eat enough grain to keep grain producers in business. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the model doesn't work for milk. If everybody becomes a massive milk exporter, then we're not going to be able to sustain producers and people aren't going to be able to make a buck.
It seems to me that there's something wrong with the free trade model we're trying to push across the world, which says that everybody should be overproducing and bringing the price down to the point where the producer can't make a buck. What does the future of the industry look like if the idea is that everybody is supposed to become a low-cost exporter instead of producing to meet demand?
Vermeer's Dairy Ltd
It's a great question. There are some good points you make.
In regard to your export question, we're not looking to mass export dairy products. We were able to innovatively create a milk class that solved a need for us, and so we were able to use export markets to complete that need. That worked very well for us, and it was fair for free trade agreements. That's one of our issues, and that's what we'd lose first with U.S. dairy sovereignty and having American oversight inside of our dairy policies. We can't create innovative policies like that without notifying our competitors, so that's a really big issue.
To your point about mass-producing milk, I think it's a race to the bottom, to the lowest cost price available. That will very often lower the levels of animal welfare and environmental sustainability. One thing that Dairy Farmers of Canada are most proud of with our proAction initiative is that we hold some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world, and we have one of the lowest carbon footprints for environmental sustainability in the world. It's very, very important for us. We're able to keep those levels because of the supply management industry.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much to all of the witnesses. It was very interesting.
We've had a full day of this. Of all of the panels that have appeared before us, I think this is the panel that most of us found most captivating. Thank you for taking the time to care, and thank you for being not just farmers but great Canadians. Thank you all very much for being here.