APRIL 20, 1948
Dairy Industry Act
3157
[...] ernment report concludes with one paragraph
which I think I should put on record. Speaking
of margarine, it says:
Its manufacture has been and is still opposed
by the dairy interests. These interests do not
appear to realize that the national well-being of
a people must come before sectional gains. At
present there is not enough butter to meet the
purchasing power of the nation, let alone its
nutritional needs. Even if butter production is
expanded to supply the needs of those who can
afford it there will always be a very large group
of people whose wages will be so low, in relation
to the price of butter, that they could not aflord
it at any price. The manufacture of margarine
is intended to fill the present gap between the
production of and the demand for butter, and
to supply the nutritional needs of the poorly
paid groups in order to improve their health and
working capacity.
What a splendid stand for our sister dominion
to have taken.
Within the last year another aspect has
become apparent in the margarine situation,
an international aspect brought about by two
things, the Geneva trade agreements and the
suggested entry of Newfoundland into
confederation. The Geneva trade agreements have
been rightly heralded, by the democratic
world at least, as a tremendous advance in
international understanding and a breaking
down of the barriers between nations to
encourage world commerce and so stimulate
world recovery; and none of the nations has
so great a stake in this program as Canada,
which is so dependent upon world markets.
This great agreement was only reached, of
course, through important concessions being
made by each of the participating nations. One
of those conditions is contained in article XI
of the general agreement, which provides that
there shall be no ban on the importation of
any product of any of the signatory nations.
The Canadian experts who were at Geneva
appeared before the senate committee last
year and said that Canada had fought very
hard against this condition because of our
margarine situation, but that in the end we
had given up and so were pledged to abide
by that clause. Further evidence along that
line was given in a statement by the leader
of the government in the senate last year,
which is found at page 34 of senate Hansard,
where he said in part:
Under article XI of the general agreement we
are bound to remove our ban on the import of
oleomargarine. The product is not specifically
mentioned, but we have bound ourselves to abstain
from prohibitions of that nature.
Almost immediately following this declaration we were informed by a government press
release, and I quote
. . . there is nothing in the Geneva agreement.
nor is there apt to be anything in the Havana
modification, to prevent us putting duties and
taxes on the margarine as high as may be felt
proper to leave the dairy industry completely
undisturbed.
If parliament should follow such a course; if
we should agree in principle to the spirit of
the agreements and then immediately turn
around and by a cynical evasion impose
tariffs which are in effect the ban which was
just removed, then I say we as a nation are
guilty of the most arrant hypocrisy. Further
I say that if every other nation takes similar
evasive methods to escape the concessions
they made, then the Geneva trade agreements
will not be worth the paper they are written
on. They will be even more worthless, I
would say, than our own signature if it is our
intention to evade the spirit of the concessions
by some technicality. If we intend to
abide by these agreements, then I say the
only sort of tariff we can in honour place on
the importation of margarine is one no higher
than that we imposed when margarine was
last imported into this country.
The Newfoundland proposals have an
equally shocking implication. This sister
country, with climate and geography much
like our own, had another problem in common
with us. They found their butter production
was insufficient to meet domestic
needs; but they did not stick their heads in
the sand like an ostrich. They embarked,
after mature considerations, upon the manufacture
of margarine, using mainly their own
domestic oils; and margarine now sells for
roughly half the price of butter there. When
they inquired about the conditions under
which they might enter confederation, naturally
they were most anxious to preserve this
right and insisted upon it. The Dominion of
Canada, in- its turn, agreed; with this provision,
however, that margarine manufactured
in Newfoundland could not cross the provincial
boundaries. This amazing condition
strikes at the very economic heart of the
pact of confederation. Paragraph 121 of the
British North America Act reads:
All articles of the growth, produce or manufacture of any one of the provinces shall,
from
and after the union, be admitted free into each
of the other provinces.
The fathers of confederation intended Canada
to be one economic unit, not nine Balkan states
with customs houses lining every provincial
boundary. This provision, therefore, strikes
at the very heart of the economic foundation
of confederation. It can be achieved only by
an amendment to section 121 of the British
North America Act. This is an amazing
thing. Apparently it is almost impossible to
secure amendments to the British North
3158
Dairy Industry Act
COMMONS
America Act for which the great bulk of the
Canadian people long, such as an amendment Which will permit contributory old age
pensions, an amendment which will permit
national health insurance, or an amendment
which will permit national control of labour
legislation; but apparently no difficulty is
anticipated in securing an amendment to the
British North America Act which, though
shaking confederation, will please the dairy
industry.
If such an amendment is obtained it will
have to be one of two kinds. Either it will
have specifically to mention margarine and
the boundaries of Newfoundland, in which
case we shall debase our national constitution
by the mention of one trivial article of commerce which is singled out for discriminatory
treatment, or it will have to be a general
amendment permitting other provinces to
impose bans. So shortly we may have
Ontario banning British Columbia apples,
British Columbia banning Alberta coal, Nova
Scotia banning Prince Edward Island potatoes,
thus breaking down the economic heart of
confederation. Such however, is the power of
the butter industry in this country.
Now getting away from the principles
behind this ban, or rather the lack of principles
behind it, let me turn now and look at the
various groups involved. Who are against
margarine? Just one group: the dairy interests of Canada; and for just one reason:
they
feel that the sale of margarine will affect
their pocketbooks. One reason, a purely selfish
one, is behind this ban. They, of course,
expand this reason into a much bigger sphere.
They say it is more than that. They say the
sale of margarine would depress the sale and
price of butter. They say butter is the
cornerstone of our dairy industry, so that it
will depress the dairy industry. Then they
say the dairy industry is the cornerstone of
our agriculture, so that it will depress agriculture; and agriculture is the cornerstone
of
Canadian industry, so the eventual result of
the lifting of the ban on margarine will be a
national depression.
Mr. SINCLAIR: My hon. friend across the way is quite
familiar with ballads and poetry. I say that is exactly the same type of logic
which traced the loss of a great battle back to the loss of a horseshoe
nail. The same argument, of course, was used by the proponents
of the cotton law of the eighteenth century, except that then it was wool and
linen which were the cornerstone of British industry. It was used again
by the champions of the corn laws in the nineteenth century,
though this time grain was the cornerstone. Both predicted national ruin
unless those bans were maintained.
History shows how false were their
assertions; and history today shows that the
assertion of the butter industry that this must
ruin Canada is equally false. The history of
every other country in the world shows that
the introduction of margarine has not debased
the dairy industry or agriculture as a whole
but has helped the dairy industry. Both
countries with butter for export, like New
Zealand, Holland or Denmark, and those
which like Canada are in short supply, such as
Newfoundland, the United Kingdom, the
United States, Norway and South Africa,
have found this to be so, for all today, with
margarine, have healthy dairy industries.
The thing about this that interests me very
much is the fact that for years we have witnessed crocodile tears on the part of the
dairy
industry about the money they lost on butter.
They were always losing money on butter.
If butter was such a money loser one would
think the dairy industry would welcome a
chance to get rid of this loss leader by the
importation and manufacture of margarine,
letting margarine take that loss and leaving
the dairy industry free to go into the more
lucrative field of the production of milk, icecream and cheese.
What is the truth of the matter? The truth
is that the sale of oleomargarine in Canada
would have very very little effect upon butter
sales or butter prices. In the United States,
for example, butter sells at about a dollar a
pound and margarine at from thirty-five to
forty—five cents a pound. The great sale of
oleomargarine is to people who today are
either not buying butter because they cannot afford it or not buying all the butter
they
would like.
More than that, the manufacture of oleomargarine is naturally complementary to
butter making, since it uses the skim milk
which is a by—product of butter. More than
that, the dairy industry gains from the oleomargarine manufacture, because there is
more
oil cake which comes as a by—product of the
increased production of vegetable oils which
will be necessary. The records of Canada also
show that, because between 1917 and 1923,
when we had oleomargarine, butter production
and consumption in Canada gained each year.
I turn then to their second defence, the
argument of protection. I shall deal with
that at the close of my speech.
The next argument which we hear so often
repeated is that We could not have any oleo- [...]
