Ottawa’s defeat in dairy dispute with U.S. could mean more choice at the cheese counter for consumers | Financial Post

Article content The new mechanism could be anything from a lottery or auction, to a first-come-first-served system, Lamp suggested. “The challenge for the Canadian government will be to design a system that still achieves its policy objectives, which is to give the vast majority of the quota to processors, while counting as fair and equitable under the USMCA,” he said. “If you import finished products … most of the value creation is going to happen in the United States.” The Retail Council of Canada (RCC), which represents the largest grocery chains in Canada, argued just allowing processors to import U.S. dairy creates an “unnecessary” layer to the supply chain, resulting in added cost. “The U.S. has it right on this and the Canadian government had it wrong,” RCC spokesperson Michelle Wasylyshen said in an email on Thursday. “If you want to see some of the benefits of free-trade agreements in the form of savings and choice for Canadian families, then you will want to see that quota allocated at the retail level.” But Mathieu Frigon, chief executive at the Dairy Processors Association of Canada, said that extra choice would actually create redundancies that would end up hurting domestic manufacturers. In the previous system, processors were good at creating more choice for consumers. Since they produce cheese as well as import it, Canadian processors had more incentive to only bring products that aren’t made domestically. “We’ve always argued that other players in the value chain do not have the same incentive,” he said. • Email: jedmiston@nationalpost.com | Twitter: jakeedmiston