All of the top executives of the Quebec poultry marketing board
are new, apparently a rebellion from the ranks against the Ontario-Quebec ban
on interprovincial trade in live chicken that brought an abrupt end to premiums
many had been garnering from processors.
Out-of-province processors were offering premiums over the
official cost-of-production price set by the marketing boards in order to get
enough chickens to meet their demand.
That prompted others to match the premiums to retain their
supplies.
About 10 per cent of the chickens from each province was
going to processors in the other province at the peak of the inter-provincial
trade.
The ban on inter-provincial trade went into effect last year
and has had many repercussions, such as CAMI International Poultry Inc. of
Welland, Ont., being left with only about a quarter of its volume of chicken to
meet the Asian-market demand in the Greater Toronto area for Hong-Kong dressed
birds (feet and heads left on) and a lot of grumbling in the ranks about
perceived problems with the marketing boards.
The new leaders of Les Élevateurs de Volailles du Quebec, which represents both chicken and
turkey quota holders, are president Pierre-Luc Leblanc, vice-presidents Lise Saint
George and Martin Lemieux and executive committee members Jean-Paul Bouchard
and Louis-Phillippe Rouleau.
There are indications that frustrations are rising at the
national level, including tensions between the federal government’s supervisory
body, the Farm Products Council of Canada, and the Chicken Farmers of Canada
national marketing agency.
The Chicken Farmers of Canada is also complaining about sharp
increases in imports of older birds that the Canadian farmers think ought to
face a tariff of about 285 per cent, but which Canadian Border Services Agency
staff and those at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
have decided fall outside of the tariff protection.
They are being classified as “spent fowl” which are usually
egg-laying birds that have reached the end of their productive lives.
There are also concerns about the increasing number of chicken-containing
products that are skirting tariffs, and the sharp increase in import volumes
once a product has been declared exempt from the tariffs.
The Canadian chicken farmers depend on tariffs to enable
them to run supply management, meaning deciding first how much money they need
to make a reasonable profit, then limiting production so they can maintain
those prices.
