The Ben Mulroney Show - Is the dairy industry in trouble, even with Supply management?

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Is the dairy industry in trouble, even with Supply management? with Guest: Sylvain Charlebois, Canadian Researcher and Professor specializing in the Food Industry -How Tariffs on Film and TV Ripple Through Canada’s Tech Sector with Guest: Mohit Rajhans Mediologist and Consultant, ThinkStart.ca If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

since since as far as I can remember, since I've been on the radio, food insecurity, and food inflation has been a dominant conversation across this country. And so I love being able to speak with, I think the foremost expert on all of these questions, Sylvain Charlebois, Canadian researcher and professor specializing in the food industry. Welcome to the show, Sylvain. And from what I understand, you got a new job. industry. Welcome to the show Sylvain and from what I understand, you got a new job. Well, sort of. I'm being borrowed by one of the top agribusiness universities in the world, Texas A&M starting in August 1. I'm just going to be spending some time there managing their graduate programs in agribusiness. Looking forward to it. It's ranked number one in the US

and number three in the world. So, it's a great privilege. And so you get to enjoy some barbecue over the summer. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Okay, well listen, you've written a piece in the Toronto Sun, which is quite alarming, why Canada will lose half its dairy farms by 2030 with supply management. Why don't you break that down for us? Well actually uh... published a report i think it was two three years ago uh... about about the future of the dairy sector and uh... i mean supply manager was is not a sexy subject but it apparently i guess more people want to hear about it it's it's not a mystery that we're losing dairy farms despite supply

management now you hear today dairy farmers of Canada saying, we need supply management to save our farms. Supply management is not saving anything. In 1972, we had 45,000 dairy farms in the country. We're down to 9,000 now, and we're likely gonna go down to below 5,000 by 2030. Because there's more consolidation. Well, that's what I was gonna ask.

I mean, we're not losing how much dairy we're producing. We're just losing the number of producers. Exactly. So with genetics and of course, with what's happening with production and processing, we're seeing larger farms. We're producing more milk, but we're, we're, we're seeing fewer farms. Some of the farms that we have in Canada are pretty, uh,

decently sized and a lot of people will say, well, we're not doing like the, we don't want to do like the U S but well, we're actually doing like the U S with supply management. So you're basically making a few richer and highly protected as a result. Yeah. And, and so, so how, play this out, game this out with me, right? You've got a new liberal government that has said they're going to break down every inter-provincial trade barrier, but they're not going to touch supply management, which to me is a false start, right? If you're going to protect that and it's dominant in a couple of provinces, then you're going to

have other provinces say, well, if you're protecting that, then I want to protect my little piece of the pie. And somebody else can say, I want to protect my piece of the pie. Next thing you know, you're stuck with interprovincial trade barriers. Exactly. And the reason why it's a bit of an issue is because quotas. So in order to commercially produce milk and butter, fat and candy, you need to own quotas. These quotas are managed by provinces, okay? And that's why a province like Quebec produces almost 40% of all the milk we need in Canada

with only about 20% of the population. When it was created at the time in 1972, the idea was to actually have equal regional representation. So you'll have the Atlantic produces its own milk and butter fat and so on and so forth. But right now what we're seeing is there are more farms in Quebec and Ontario producing for the rest of Canada. And that's why politically it's become has become a political hot potato because, well, politicians don't want to lose votes in Quebec in particular. So that's why they can't do anything with the system right now.

So, but at what point, like the 2030 is not that far off, right? But if, if, if the trend continues to losing the number of dairy farms that we have, is that going to be a signal? Like at some point, do we reach a red line where politicians wake up and realize that supply management is not necessarily the savior of the industry that it has been touted as and could there be changes to the system in order to support a healthy dairy industry?

I think that politicians know that. I think that Prime Minister Mark Carney knows that. He can't say it publicly because he'll get clobbered. I mean, the dairy farmers of Canada are one of the most powerful lobby groups in Canada. Sure, but aren't they, by definition, I mean, it must have been more powerful back in the day when we had 45,000 of them. I mean, now you only have 9,000. The numbers don't bear out that it's, I mean, it seems like by definition, they had with fewer members, you're going to have less clout, no? Well, the arithmetic are fooling you then, because it's not about the numbers. It's about

the money. Oh, okay. I see. Shame on me for thinking it was about people. Did you watch the Maple Leaf game last night? I don't watch the Leafs. Didn't you notice the logo on their jersey? It says milk. It's the dairy farmers of Ontario. Gotcha. They spent $20 million to put that logo on the Maple Leafs hockey club jersey. Nobody else can afford that. I gotcha. Okay, okay. Well, listen, I'm glad you've highlighted this. And I hope you keep

beating this drum because we need people like you to, to highlight that, you know, systems can be improved and sticking with something because it worked in the past doesn't mean it's a system worth sticking with in the future. I want to talk about a conversation I was having earlier in the show about restaurants Canada suggesting that we need to end the GST and HST on food permanently specifically for restaurants during the you know, during that GST holiday, there really was an uptick in people going to restaurants. And I got to ask you what you think about this. Well, the the uptick wasn't significant. As I can tell. It was about 3%, which is nice. Of course, restaurants need the business.

I don't know how you feel about that, Ben, but I'm not sure about food service and restaurants. But certainly, I have an issue applying GST on food sold in grocery stores. I mean, Canadians are basically spending about two billion dollars worth of taxes at the grocery store and that's a bit of a problem because uh... of course it affects food affordability and right now we're charging taxes on caesar salads healthy sandwiches uh... because of shrink inflation there are more products being taxed now at the grocery store, I certainly would revisit that policy and exempting

all food sold retail from the GST. But food service, I think I need to see it's not an argument there. Yeah, and my contention, and I made this public earlier, is that look, the GST has served a very valuable role in society. It helped us slay the deficit and after profligate spending by the Liberal government, every penny thus far the GST is now going towards paying the interest on our national debt. So there's a value, I think that's a waste, it's a shame that we have to spend it that way, but it's a tax that everybody is used to paying and if we keep carving out pieces of who gets to save on the GST, it's going to lose its ability to help us through these really tricky times.

And if all of a sudden we start saying, well, we're going to help this industry, somebody else is going to come asking for their carve out. And next thing you know, there's no value in the GST anymore. I agree. The only thing, if you are to eliminate a tax, and we spoke about this before, it creates a phenomenal opportunity to stick pricing. Companies will actually try to actually cover that spread, that actually that gap left behind by taxes for a while.

Yeah. Things will get back to normal, but taxing food, I think, is immoral. We shouldn't be doing this in Canada. That's interesting. I mean, I get it. I get it in principle. I just don't know that we as a country can afford

to keep carving out from this tax or that. And rather than looking to the GST as the problem that needs to be solved, perhaps we need to take a step back and more broadly look at our at our tax system and ask ourselves, all right, where where are we hurting people the most and how can we give them relief beyond simply saying, oh, you know, the GST is bad and if we get rid of it, then it's good. I'll just give you one example of how ridiculous some of our fiscal policies are. So if you have a box of six granola bars, grocery store, that's not taxable. But if you go down to five, the same granola bars, the same, same granola bars, it's taxable.

Oh my God. Okay. We're going to leave that there. I want to unpack that with you at a later date. But thank you, Sylvain. I really appreciate your insights today. Take care. Bye-bye. us from award-winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day, so take this as your personal invitation to join us on the Global National Podcast. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. The Ben Mulroney Show marches on on this Tuesday. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to help us build this show

into something undeniable. I really appreciate it. I know that you can do anything with your time. And the fact that you choose to join us, some of you day in and day out, every single day you're here with us. And I want to say thank you. It really means a lot.

A lot of, lot of stories in the news that really deserve some attention. The fact that Mark Carney is in Washington for his first face to face with Donald Trump is significant, to say the least. It's been a long time coming, if I'm being honest, the fact that it took so long between the, I mean, it's been the hundred days since he's been president. And with the exception of with the exception of Justin Trudeau's foray, terrible foray into bilateral at Mar-a-Lago, this is the first time a Canadian leader meets with him. And there's a lot to discuss.

That being said, Donald Trump is at a loss as to what is even on the docket. I don't know. He's coming to see me. said, Donald Trump is at a loss as to what is even on the docket. I don't know. He's coming to see me. I'm not sure what he wants to see me about, but I guess he wants to make a deal. Everybody does. We have something that they all want. China wants to make a deal very badly. You see what's happening to China. China is being decimated. And I don't want that to happen. Yeah. You don't know what he wants to talk about. I oftentimes say on this show, don't talk to me like I'm stupid.

And that now you're talking, Mr. President, with the utmost respect, you're talking to Canadians like we're stupid. You've been clamoring for months, railing to high heaven, that Canada is the big bad boogeyman to the north, stealing $200 billion a year, stealing your automotive industry. Now you're complaining about the films that we make up here. Everywhere you look, Canada has been cheating the American. Let's not forget the trade deal that you negotiated. You are now calling the worst trade deal of all time.

Don't sit there and tell us that you don't know what he wants to talk about. So he's got a big hill to climb, Mark Carney. I do not envy him, the task, but this is the task that he was elected for. This is the task that he convinced enough Canadians that he was the man best suited for. So, Mark Carney, Mr. Carney, I know it's going to be a hard job. It's going to be really tough to negotiate with someone like Donald Trump, but this is what you signed up for. So I know you're trying to keep expectations low, but Canadians have high expectations that you are going to take this first meeting and build on it. I don't know what's going to get accomplished in this first meeting.

Maybe not too much, but at the very least, like let's kick, let's start, let's start kicking the ball down the field, shall we? And I think you're gonna get some help from the conservatives on that front because the conservatives, through Andrew Scheer, former leader Andrew Scheer, he was also the house leader in the previous parliament. I believe he's the frontrunner,

sort of be the interim leader of the party in the House of Commons while Pierre Poliev is fighting for a seat out in Battle Creek, Alberta. I believe he's the front runners to sort of be the interim leader of the party in the House of Commons while Pierre Poliev is fighting for a seat out in Battle Creek, Alberta. He said that they're willing to work with Mark Carney and back some liberal legislation, especially as it relates to our relationship with Donald Trump.

And he says, given the fact that the liberals sort of kind of lifted a lot of conservative policies, if they follow through with those policies, yeah, the conservatives will be will be more likely to support them. And I have to say, as somebody who wishes parliament worked a little bit better, I like the idea that the conservatives are going to be more productive than a, I don't want to say obstructionist in the House of Commons.

Your job is to oppose, but if the legislation lines up with your values, don't oppose for the sake of opposing. I think it would go a long way for Canadians to feel like parliament is working for them. So I say kudos to the conservatives for being open to the possibility of voting with the liberals. Pierre Poliev has broken his silence in a video

that he put on social media. You'll remember he lost his seat and obviously he didn't get the conservatives into government. And we haven't heard from him since the election night. So here's what he said. Well, it's been about from him since the election night. So here's what he said. Well, it's been about a week since the election and it didn't go how we wanted.

But when you get knocked down, you get up and get going. And we've got a lot to be thankful for. I'm thankful for you, the countless people who packed out our rally halls, our 2.3 million extra votes, the 25 extra seats, the breakthroughs in Ontario and BC, the expanded coalition of young people, union workers, entrepreneurs, soldiers, and countless others who had never voted before and are now supporting our conservative cause.

Now it wasn't enough. We didn't get over the finish line, which means that I need to learn and grow, and our team needs to expand. That will be my mission. Well, it's interesting because when I watched that video, the thing that stuck out to me was, what does learn and grow mean? And I think if

Pierre Poliev can define it well, and prove that he's living those words, then I think his caucus will support him. But right before going into that all important caucus meeting where it's the membership of that caucus that is going to determine his fate as leader, he was asked by a journalist what growth actually means.

I think we all learned is that the math has changed dramatically. Like if you had told me that me that for one that we would get 41% of the vote a couple years ago I would have said wow that's ambitious but if you told me that we would get 41% of the vote and still not win I would have said you're crazy but in fact our electoral map has changed. It's at this point right now it could you could again, but right now it's looking more and more like a two-party map. We're getting 41 percent, by the way, the best result that we've had since 1988 is not

enough, was not enough to form government. So we have to ask ourselves, how do we first of all keep the enormous number of the 8 million people who voted for us, that was just almost 2.5 million more than the previous time, but then add another roughly million votes that will allow us to get over the finish line. That makes sense, but I think if I can be so bold as well, I think he's got to listen. As much as I didn't like to hear the criticisms by Ontario premier Doug Ford or Nova Scotia premier Tim Houston during the election

campaign. I think you have to listen to those people as well. They have an experience with the party, with the apparatus around the leader and with the leader himself that probably requires some attention. So while I do think that there is some work to be done at the party level, I think the leader himself has to say, look, the way he has led and the way he has built bridges or not built bridges needs to change. So I don't know what's happening in that caucus room, but I do hope that the caucus members

ask some really tough questions that elicits really honest answers. And I do hope that the end result of that process is that Pierre Poliev is maintained as leader. But, and if I can say, look, I wanted him to win. I wanted him to be prime minister today. That didn't come to pass. But if he is really honest and raw about his personal failings as leader

and is willing to adapt to this new reality, then he could come out a far better leader than he ever would have been prior to this defeat. And like we said, you don't test yourself. You don't ask yourself tough questions when you win. You only become better by losing because that's when you ask yourself really tough questions and you can pivot, you can change. So it may be hopeful, wishful thinking on my part,

but I do see, you know, you become a better winner when you lose. And so that's how I see it. Here is another example of like, come on, CBC, do better. There's a story in the CBC, at the cbc.ca, that breaks the bombshell story of Danielle Smith's Mar-a-Lago visit that cost more than $10,000.

Now just for context, there were four people on this trip and they had to fly there. You want to tell me why that is a big deal at all? $10,000 in this day and age to travel for four people? I want to know who our travel agent is and I want to get that deal. That's an insane story. I mean it's false outrage, absolute false outrage that it's a nothing burger non-story that they never would do if that premier had been liberal. Full stop. Prove me wrong. Anyway, that's all I gotta say about that. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney Show.

Thank you so much for spending a bit of your Tuesday with us. And as always on Wednesdays, I always look forward to Wednesdays because we have a lot of fun with the Dilemma Panel. That's when I invite two great guests to join me. We get to learn a little bit about them. And then we get to learn a little bit about you and your daily dilemmas And then we try to solve them and we don't often succeed

But I promise you it makes for good radio and so what we need from you is to learn about your problems I mean is it a problem with your boss or your kid or your dog or your mom or your stepmom or your? in-laws just send us an email at askbenn at chorusent.com and if we pick it then just expect your life to get a lot easier after we're done because we're going to solve your problem. I'm now very happy to be joined by somebody who solves my problems because I got lots of questions and he's got the answers Mohit Rajan's Mediologist and Consultant with thinkstart.ca. Mohit, welcome back to the show.

And thanks for having me. And I want to give you a shout out for the dilemma panel. Now that I've been listening to it, I have thought a little bit more in the context of, how would I get the salt through the dilemma panel? Yes, exactly. We like to drill down and really, sometimes we got to get real with people.

Sometimes we tell them that the problem in your life is you. Yeah. Yeah. And unfortunately, the problem with me submitting would be, how do I make it not sound like this is my problem? But nevertheless, I'm here to talk about tech as usual. I just want to give a shout out to the panel. Well, thank you very much.

And OK, so we're hearing rumblings that Donald Trump may want to tariff the film industry if films aren't made in the United States I mean it seems nonsensical to me and it already seems like he's walking it back a bit but when he speaks you got to take him seriously because he's the president and So talk to me about how tariffs on film and TV could ripple through the Canadian tech sector Yeah, this is something very interesting that people probably don't necessarily see because it's not front and center. You know, the Canadian tech industry, for example,

in visual effects has been an industry leader from Montreal to Toronto to Vancouver. And also for decades, we have been the service provider to the American productions that come up here and done top notch. And you know, I'm sure you've covered this for a while now. And of course, you're a front row and center when you watch the American industry

really start to benefit. Well, yeah, because what happened in the 80s when a movie would come shoot up here, they'd come shoot here and then they would leave because all the expert tech jobs in terms of editing and all that stuff, all that happened south of the border. But then Vancouver, specifically Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, they all built up

that those knock-on industries that allow a production to stay up here. So that by and large, you can pretty much do everything you want outside of Hollywood. Atlanta and Georgia being a prime example, there's more movie, film and TV production in Atlanta and Georgia now than there is in Hollywood because they've got everything, it's a one-stop shop now.

As you've indicated is we are in a situation now where multiple industries have started to build around the fact that this consistent amount of American production will happen within Canada. And so the ripple effects that we'll start to see is a lot of the innovators will have to unfortunately ship some of their talent to different places because we won't have that opportunity anymore.

So I think it's very important for Canadians to step up on the world stage right now when it comes down to being service providers and showing that we can compete on an international level as well. All right, let's move on to Google. The DOJ has got a hate on for Google and they're breaking it up.

Explain the breakup to me and will Canadians notice? This is really about the ad tech when it comes down to it. When you are going to search for something right now on Google, you get a bunch of ads instead of a bunch of answers. And essentially the US is trying to break up that entire system. This idea that Google has had all the data associated with what you're searching for

and also sells that data to advertisers in order for them to find the actual target consumer. But Ben, as you and I both know, this isn't as easy as just unplugging something. Yeah, this is a deconstruction of a decade long of ad tech that has infiltrated systems and people spend millions of dollars on from brands right down to actual real estate agents to politicians. So can this happen in our lifetime? I'm not sure. Well, let's stick with Google and Gmail. It's the default free email service for so many people. And now there's a new warning. Google's urging everybody to immediately like to change their passwords because they're fishing.

Fishing attacks have now been supercharged by AI. Explain that to me and it sounds frightening. We are in a place right now where even I can't tell what's an official email from somebody versus what's actually a notification that I need to pay attention to versus ignore right now. The biggest one that I'm noticing is that through Gmail, you're getting an official notification.

What looks like an official notification that you need to actually change your password and then notify Gmail about what the new password is. That is a phishing scam. What is a problem that many people are falling into. Ben, I'm getting actual emails from people saying that they're recruiting on behalf of corporations that I might be in touch with, if you know what I mean. I think email is starting to create that sort of weird last frontier of spam that's going out.

And I think it's ultimately going to be one of the reasons that people stop using commercial email service because it's getting out of hand. Yeah, like you get what you pay for in a lot of cases, right? And there are some services out there that if you're willing to fork over a few dollars a month, they have, I guess, a more robust security. Is it more robust than the AI demons that are trying to get in?

I don't know, but yeah, you get what you pay for. Let's talk about Meta. I remember last week there was a big announcement by Meta about their new AI app. And I don't know that it went over with the same bluster and bombast that other AI launches have had. I love the way you just tried to describe it as something that

might have been something great. But nevertheless, I watched this and I played with this honestly, Ben and I was like, Yay, the crowd goes mild. Yeah, really not impressed with playing around with what? Have you played around with it? No, I haven't. I have to be honest, I haven't been on Instagram almost at all recently. It's just not part of my daily routine anymore. So it just sits there.

But so explain to me what they wanted to achieve and tell me why and maybe it hasn't lived up to expectation. Quite simply, Meta AI is trying to be what chat GPT is already mixed in with people within the meta platform, the Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp worlds, having the ability to connect all of their natural accounts that they already have into the standalone app. So whatever you hear about using chat GPT for from writing letters, the blogs and all the stuff that you've heard about for two years, right down to creating pictures you

can now do with this meta AI app. But there's nothing about it that makes you think, oh, this is something I should download right away and get involved with. Instead, it looks like what Zuckerberg is classically doing is creating his own virtual version of something that nobody needs. Yeah, but I guess like, and you talk a little bit about AI exhaustion, like every single week there seems to be another either advancement or iteration or another company that's jumping on the bandwagon or trying to take advantage of AI or lead it somewhere it hasn't gone before and I don't know there just seems to be a lot of noise around it.

And I'm spending most of my time demystifying it rather than accelerating people on it. We're still in a very cloudy place, pardon the pun, when it comes down to this technology, but that's why we're here to follow it. Yeah, but when it comes to AI on the meta platform, I like, you know, every time I would open Instagram before, it would tell me that it was training and AI. And I've never looked to Instagram and thought to myself, gosh, you know, what make this better, some sort of AI integration, like it was it's intuitive. It was it gave me what I wanted. There was an algorithm that knew that I liked I like cooking videos, you know, and for some reason, it thinks that all I want are bicep videos as well. I don't. And and but but I don't I didn't

don't think it needed anything else. And I think you and I probably can look back at our history of following everything that Zuckerberg has done within Facebook and often said, you know, I'm not sure anybody needs that. You know what I mean? I think everything from the poke button right down to being able to share things and comment on things. There were moments where Facebook wasn't exactly what everybody needed. Let's just see how it ends up shaping up because I don't necessarily think that they they've got a home run with this one. No, I know.

And that didn't work. And the whole metaverse thing, it fell flat to me. I didn't think anybody, I don't think it's been adopted the way people thought it was going to be. I mean, he's not, I don't know. To me, the whole place feels half-baked. But that's my two cents as a Luddite. Mohit, thank you so much for joining us.

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