The strategic maple syrup reserve isn't in the interests of producers or consumers

Do we really need a maple syrup strategic reserve?

Yes folks there really is a strategic maple syrup reserve and it's in Quebec. It's not there for the benefit of the maple syrup producer but rather as a buffer to control market prices. This all lives with the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, a government-sponsored cartel created in 1990 to fix the price and 'improve the marketing' of maple syrup. It's not universally popular even among the producers it's intended to protect:

Backed by the Canadian civil courts, the federation has the monopoly for selling Quebecois maple syrup on the wholesale market, and for exporting it outside the province. It sets the price for how much it pays producers, and it charges them a 12% fee per pound of syrup.

Producers are only allowed to sell independently a very small amount of syrup, to visitors to their farm, or to their local supermarket. And then they still have to pay the 12% commission to the FPAQ.

"We don't own our syrup any more," says Mrs Grenier, who calls the federation the "mafia".

Unwilling to put up with this state of affairs, Mrs Grenier and her husband have in recent years been selling their maple syrup across the border in the neighbouring Canadian province of New Brunswick.

In scenes that could come from a Hollywood drugs movie, they load barrels of syrup on to a truck as quickly as possible, and then race it over the border line under the cover of darkness.

The couple are breaking the law, but say they are fighting for the right to sell their syrup for a price - and to customers - of their own choosing.

Unsurprisingly the results of this cartel are two-fold - first there's folk like Mrs Grenier who want no part of it and smuggle the syrup out of Quebec and second other people in other places start to produce more (and cheaper) syrup:

Quebec has long dominated the maple syrup scene, holding some 80 per cent or more of world production in years past, partly by maintaining a strictly enforced supply-management, marketing and quality-control system. But aggressive U.S. rivals have made inroads, reducing the province’s market share to an average of 72 per cent over the past three years, said Paul Rouillard, deputy director of the 7,300-member federation.

And the projections are the Quebec will carry on losing market share to US (and other Canadian) producers. Dear readers this is always the result of protectionism and price-fixing. Maple syrup might not be oil or grain but the same rules apply.

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If you don't want your view spoiling, buy the view....

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NIMBYs are fine if they're like Canadian philanthropist, Jim Hill:

Philanthropist Jim Hill is very proud of the Inglewood art gallery he founded in 2012.

So much so, that when a proposed development threatened the view from the gallery’s showpiece west-facing window, he bought the lot — and cancelled the development completely.

Which is the whole point. If you want to keep that view, you have to own that view. Otherwise someone can (and probably will) block it.

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Cheese smuggling or Why criminals like protectionism

A few of you, on hearing this story, will have grinned a little. Maybe even guffawed. After all cheese smuggling is funny, no?

Canadian authorities say two police constables helped smuggle more than $200,000 worth of cheaper U.S. cheeses and other foods across the border from Buffalo to sell to pizzerias and restaurants.

The Niagara Regional Police Service announced today that the pair, one of whom has been fired, were arrested and charged, along with a third man. Charges against the three, all from Fort Erie, Ontario, include smuggling and other customs violations.

The point, however, is that with a very long and pretty open border, the Canadians are daft to impose huge tariffs on imported dairy produce as well as a range of permits, licences and rules (not just on imports but on selling dairy in a different province). All to "protect" the dairy industry (at the expense of the consumer).

And, as this story shoes us, the big winners aren't the cowherds and milkmaids of Canada but a bunch of criminals (helped in this case by a pair of corrupt cops). Protectionism sounds good when politicians promise it to one or other special interest or in a sort of populist, "keep out the foreigners" campaign but when it's introduced it acts as a tax on consumers to the benefit of smugglers.

And you don't need to protect the dairy industry. Go look at New Zealand and learn.

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