Marketing boards cost consumers

Murray Mandryk’s article on instalment payments to Quebec (Wall’s feelings on Quebec echo Diefenbaker’s, Oct. 18) left out the most egregious one that most Canadians pay every day; the high cost of dairy, eggs and chicken to Canadian consumers because of marketing boards.

Quebec farmers benefit the most from these mechanisms for holding the consumer hostage, and removing them might create a new constitutional crisis.

A recent analysis by a Canadian national newspaper showed that the reason few politicians want to tackle the issue is because only the corporate farms that produce these products are aware of the implications of this reverse Robin Hood system, while most consumers — including the most prominent victims, young families with children — are not.

Maxime Bernier, a politician with the courage to raise the issue, discovered the cost of doing so.

The aforementioned article used the assumption that marketing boards raised the cost of dairy, eggs and chicken by roughly 70 per cent. Our experience with buying groceries in the southern

U.S. is that, after conversion to a common currency, Canadians are paying well over 100 per cent more for these items. Mr. Mandryk’s column suggests that it’s not only consumers who remain unaware of this situation. Bev Robertson,

Regina and Mesa, Ariz.