I wasn’t a fan of Andrew Scheer even before he bought the leadership of the Conservative party with Quebec dairy money. I think he was one of the worst possible choices for Tory leader, but we’re stuck with his ineffectual bought-and-paid-for self to attempt to beat an incumbent PM who has the undying loyalty of 95% of the mainstream media. And we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his loyalty isn’t to Canada or to the Tories, but to his paymasters in Big Dairy. Despite this, Chris Selley says that The Milk Dud’s vassalage to a well-moneyed and legally privileged class may end up destroying the government cartel that is Supply Management:
Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.
There’s no shame in a conservative politician opposing the federal government of a gigantic country containing multitudes of lifestyles trying to create an ideal diet for all its citizens. “I’ll eat what I want, get out of my kitchen,” is a perfectly respectable position — especially since the food guide is such a joyless, under-salted slog. But that’s not Scheer’s position. Instead he’s vowing to “get it right.” This suggests consulting people other than medical and scientific experts, most of whom were relatively pleased with this edition of the food guide. It suggests bringing industry voices back into the mix. And that’s not something anyone other than Big Dairy and Big Meat should want.
The so-con comparison is somewhat facetious, of course: Abortion is a third-rail issue, or at least the media treats it as such, whereas unwavering protectionist support for our dairy farmers is an all-party consensus-cum-contest to see who can most abase themselves. The winner, by far, is Andrew Scheer. On Wednesday he excoriated the Liberal government for allegedly missing deadlines to explain how it would compensate dairy farmers for ever-so-slightly opening the Canadian market to European and Asian countries.
“(This) mistreatment is unacceptable,” he told the Saskatonian audience. His future government would “never back down from defending the (dairy) sector,” he vowed.
In a strange way, it gives me hope. Surely it’s objectively weird that a man the Liberals are trying to portray as the human embodiment of Canada’s future ruination is so cartoonishly in favour of subsidizing and coddling a given industry, thereby continuing to inflate prices for Canadian consumers, and yet his opponents’ only instinct is to find a way to agree with him. By rights it ought to be the Conservatives who bust up lactosa nostra (copyright CBC’s David Cochrane). But having rebuffed Big Dairy’s dubious dietary advice, the option is entirely open to the Liberals as well. The average Canadian grocery shopper will thank whichever party finally gets it done.
