n the conservative side, libertarian former cabinet minister Maxime Bernier faced cries of hypocrisy when, as minister of industry, and later foreign affairs, he was forced to endorse the tariffs. In his subsequent run for Tory leader, he atoned for past misdeeds by campaigning hard against supply management, calling it the work of a “cartel” forcing high prices on Canadian families “to protect 10 percent of farmers” in the country. The fact that Bernier, a Quebecer himself, narrowly lost several Quebec ridings to rival Andrew Scheer was widely interpreted as evidence that the dairy vote played a significant role in the outcome.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e54a0ad9dc2f
“I certainly do not owe my leadership victory to anybody,” Scheer joked at a press gallery dinner, taking a showy gulp from a Saputo milk carton.
Support for supply management is a difficult issue to poll, largely because the Canadian public has only the dimmest awareness of the status quo. Yet judged by their actions, culture and temperament, it does strain credibility to believe that there exists a broad-based constituency in favor of paying more for a basic staple in order to further benefit a province already widely resented for its coddling by Ottawa.
Yet this is the trade-war hill that Trudeau has chosen to die on. He has alienated the entire western half of his country through bungled oil and pipeline policies, and now his path to a second term in next year’s election seems increasingly tied to maintaining the goodwill of Quebec.
Americans do not have spotless hands when it comes to using unfair measures to protect their own sacred industries, yet it’s a myth to believe Canada has ever had much interest in running hard in the opposite direction, and embracing the sort of unqualified economic integration with the United States equivalent to that enjoyed among member nations of the European Union, or one American state to another.
The consequences of this long-standing approach, which has always been grounded in economically regressive nationalism and politics, will now be felt. For centuries, much of Canadian policymaking has been justified on the grounds that maintaining sovereignty from the United States is the highest good. It works fine — so long as the United States never feels the need to indulge in a bit of pompous sovereignty of its own.
Bookmarks