David Clement: The one issue that could revive Poilievre’s hopes — ending supply management

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Last week, the federal government announced that it’s extending the gas tax holiday into 2027, which is yet another policy that Prime Minister Mark Carney has borrowed from the Conservative handbook. And it isn’t an isolated case, given that Carney zeroed the consumer carbon tax, cancelled the electric vehicle mandate and is working to expand oil and gas capacity.

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The rightward shift of the Liberals is appreciated, especially after the malaise of the Trudeau years, but this shift has boxed in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who built his brand on being a tax-cutting, mandate-scrapping alternative to the Liberals, only to watch a Liberal prime minister take his bread and butter off the table.

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In the consistent chaos created by U.S. President Donald Trump, the Conservatives’ prospects are looking pretty bleak. The party is lagging in the polls and struggling with the Liberal sweep of the last three byelections. With upwards of six more byelections on the horizon, the Conservatives need a wedge issue that represents a genuine dividing line that Carney’s centrist instincts won’t let him touch. Poilievre has that wedge issue sitting in plain sight: supply management.

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For more than 50 years, Canada’s dairy, egg and poultry sectors have operated behind a wall of production quotas and prohibitive tariffs, insulated from the market competition that every other Canadian farmer faces. As a result, the industry has become one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country and no major party has been willing to touch it. That unwillingness is exactly why it could act as the perfect wedge issue for Poilievre’s Conservative party.

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The first justification for the end of supply management is meaningfully addressing the cost-of-living crisis and the rising prices Canadians are seeing at the grocery store. Research from the Montreal Economic Institute has shown that supply management has Canadians paying between 37 and 55 per cent more for eggs, chicken and milk. This is by design, built by a cartel with government backing, and the result is that more than 100,000 Canadians are pushed under the poverty line due to higher prices.

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Poilievre has repeatedly talked about how there are a record number of Canadians lining up at food banks, but how can one point out that very real problem without addressing a program that intentionally inflates prices? Breaking the quota system would open Canada to competition, and is one of the few grocery price fixes that could be implemented in a single budget.

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Supporters of supply management will argue that ending the program would spell the end of the domestic egg, poultry and dairy industries as we know them. That is a concern worth considering, but one that history has shown doesn’t hold much weight. When New Zealand ended its quota system and subsidies, farmers predicted ruin. What actually happened, for dairy specifically, is that New Zealand built one of the most competitive industries on the planet.