Tories as fake on free trade as Trudeau

Canada is hosting the leaders of six other great democracies this weekend for the 2018 G7 summit outside Quebec City. It is expected to be unusually testy this year, with U.S. President Donald Trump standing apart from his allies on the matter of free trade (Trump has already said he will skip the closing sessions). Canada is expected to be among the loudest to criticize Trump’s recent decision to slap import duties on aluminum and steel (produced by even some of America’s closest allies), rightly arguing that trade should be as free as possible, and no more so than among allies.

Except for our precious dairy cows and chickens, of course. Those must be protected at all costs.

Canada’s major political parties have long had a bizarrely conflicted, deeply hypocritical approach to trade. Canada’s prosperity hinges entirely on open access to world markets. Trade has made us among the richest nations (per capita, of course), in the world. It sustains our high quality of life. Both the Liberals and Conservatives understand this, at least in recent political history, and have aggressively championed more Canadian access to the world.

But neither party dares to take on the apparently overwhelming political power of a few thousand dairy and poultry producers, concentrated in a handful of ridings in Ontario and Quebec, protected by massive tariff walls and a cartelized supply system. That doesn’t simply increase the cost of food staples for Canadian consumers, effectively making it a tax on lower-income families (who spend a greater proportion of their income on basics). It also is a hindrance that has repeatedly complicated Canadian efforts to secure trade deals with other economies: The Trans Pacific Partnership, the EU’s CETA negotiation, and NAFTA talks have all struggled to overcome our resistance.

So even as Canada plays the aggrieved loyal ally over aluminum and steel, the president is right to note that Canada does not hesitate to block agricultural imports from the very same nation whose soldiers fight with us, shoulder to shoulder.

Yet, aside from a vague comment from Trudeau last weekend on NBC’s Meet the Press that “We’re moving towards, you know, flexibility in those areas that I thought was very, very promising,” there is little sign that Canada will yield from its own, equally disgraceful trade protectionism. Protecting supply management and avoiding the wrath of the dairy lobby has somehow achieved bipartisan consensus among Tories and Liberals alike. In fact, just this week, the Conservatives — our theoretically right-wing free marketers — put out a press release explicitly defending supply management against Trudeau’s suggestion that it might someday have to undergo “flexibility.”

The few thousand dairy and poultry farmers who signed up as instant Conservatives during the party’s last leadership race to give leader Andrew Scheer his razor-thin margin of victory over a vocal opponent of supply management, Maxime Bernier, must consider their one-time membership fees the best investment they ever made.

Scheer has ensured that there is no Canadian federal party that will stand up for genuine free trade, or even for consumers. Trump would seem to be the only one demanding a better deal for Canadian families.