As I’ve written elsewhere, I loved my trip west to Saskatoon and Calgary. It was great to connect with new people and to reconnect with old acquaintances.
Even though I’d covered Martha Hall Findlay as a politician, we had never met in person and chatted. We fixed that last week when we met in her office at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.
Martha is a smart, engaging and interesting woman.
Despite being a Liberal MP from 2008 to 2011, she doesn’t hold all the traditional orthodox opinions. She’s particularly offside of the Liberal establishment on supply management, actually make that she’s offside the entire Canadian political establishment on this issue.
It wasn’t the entire focus of our convesation, we also talked about trade, Canada’s protectionist tendencies and whether we really can diversify our trade away from the United States.
But on supply management, in particular dairy, she broke down why this system is bad for Canadian consumers, and Canadian farmers and how we could get rid of it while still making farmers whole.
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Below are the official liner notes from my bosses…
For a moment, it seemed all Canadians understood that, facing U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war, we had to make our economy as resilient and competitive as possible. As Martha Hall Findlay discusses with Brian Lilley, there was finally talk of ending Ottawa’s war on oil and gas, building infrastructure and boosting productivity. The government even yanked the aggravating digital services tax. But, explains Hall Findlay, a former Liberal MP, now director of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, politicians just kneecapped nearly every Canadian exporter by exempting our globally detested dairy supply management system from trade talks … forever. Hall Findlay explains how this small cartel of millionaires works, why it’s so powerful and why it hurts not just consumers, but every other trade-exposed business. (Recorded July 4, 2025)
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