Canada-EU trade talks with Wallonia collapse as Freeland heads home
I&#x27;m not well-versed in these trade talks, but you know what really grinds my gears about Canada&#x27;s current protectionism?<p>Butter.<p>No, really. In Canada, the dairy industry is run by a single co-op. That means that all milk and milk-based products must be sourced from the co-op (i.e. your provincial dairy bank).<p>So all butter in Canada comes from the provincial supply. Want locally-sourced butter? It&#x27;s nearly impossible to obtain, and even if you can, it&#x27;s extremely expensive due to tariffs. Want butter that&#x27;s completely grass-fed? It&#x27;s possible, but also extremely expensive, and it comes from the provincial bank, so it&#x27;s possibly mixed with other cows and&#x2F;or milk. And all butter is 80% milk fat, which is abysmally low. European dairy is 85%, sometimes 90+%.<p>Only very recently has it been possible to buy &quot;New Zealand&quot; grass-fed butter here, but it&#x27;s $11 per 1&#x2F;2 pound, likely due to import tariffs. And it goes through a local dairy, so I&#x27;m not 100% confident it&#x27;s truly New Zealand milk. Nor can I confirm its fat percentage, so I could be just paying for a lot of water.<p>If you want to drive across the border to buy butter and bring it back, be prepared to answer a lot of questions to the CBSA, and possibly pay more tariffs, making it prohibitively expensive.<p>This applies to most other agricultural products too, like cheese, eggs, wheat, and more. Getting good cheese in Canada is expensive and hard.<p>The fact that the article mentions that the CETA made strides in agricultural issues tells me that what I cited above is a possible issue in these trade negotiations. The same was true for TPP.<p>I&#x27;ll be really happy when these trade deals pass so I can get some real food at a decent price, and my local farmers can be given an opportunity to compete. Until then, the biggest opponents to these deals are farmers. That should make you question their motives.