Sunday, May 5, 2013

Selling out Canada's dairy farmers for cheaper pizza

Not that the pizza is going to be any cheaper; the bottom lines at the big pizza chains will be a little bit plumper.

The fact that Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz can call this a "good news story" for Canadian dairy farmers tells you everything you need to know about where the Harper gang stands on supporting Canada's dairy farmers.

The price of pizza has done something amazing over the years. Pizza could be our barometer showing how well we're doing in the race to the bottom.

I remember back in the early seventies, hanging at my buddy Johnny's place on Ferndale Ave in Guelph. Just around the corner was a Marco's Pizza, one of the first wave of pizza joints in town. From time to time the drunken louts and teenage pot-heads who congregated in Johnny's basement (Johnny's mom's basement, to be precise) would pool their resources and order a couple of large from Marco's.

We'd stumble over to pick them up, and I remember two large was over twenty bucks.

So how is it that in some of the big chains today you can still get two large and be in the twenties forty years later?

The big chains came in and so did cardboard crusts and industrial bacon and mushrooms.

Nevertheless, folks kept buying pizza and the price kept going down even though Canada has dairy price supports in place that keep cheese prices high and small-scale dairy farmers in business.

Say good-bye to all that.

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