How the food crisis affects Canada.

The tabling of the Commission sur l’avenir de l’agriculture et de l’agroalimentaire québécois’ report.

The cost of milk regulation in Quebec.

The cost of milk regulation in Quebec.

The cost of milk regulation in Quebec.

Publication of an Economic Note and an opinion poll on social assistance reforms.

The Commission sur l’avenir de l’agriculture et de l’agroalimentaire du Québec hold its hearings.

Despite a worldwide trend toward market liberalization and competition, most politicians and people involved in Quebec agriculture maintain a vigorous defence of supply management of certain farm products. Supply management is the mechanism by which milk, poultry and egg producers in Canada (most of them located in Quebec and Ontario) adjust production to protect their incomes. To this end, domestic demand is evaluated arbitrarily, and efforts are made to match this with production of the goods covered by the scheme.

Publication of an Economic Note on an obsolete, costly and unfair system: supply management.

In the last few months, serious setbacks afflicting Quebec’s pork industry have been making headlines: the closing of slaughterhouses and processing plants, layoffs, and financial losses. A number of causes have been used to explain this crisis, in particular the rise of the Canadian dollar, industry cycles, high sickness levels, a lack of competitiveness among slaughterhouses, added costs to meet environmental standards, rigidities in collective marketing, and so on. A moratorium decreed by the provincial government on increases in pork production from 2002 to 2005 also stalled the rapid growth that the industry had experienced for more than a decade and stymied numerous investment projects.