Canada is heading toward another existential crisis as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau desperately clings to power. He’s hobbled his way through governing since 2015, and now he’s been abandoned by his NDP partners, even after promising to fix everyone’s teeth and hand out free prescription drugs.

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Diane Francis: Trudeau will dutifully do the separatists' bidding Back to video

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After NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh pulled out of his confidence-and-supply agreement with the Liberals, Trudeau looked to court the Bloc Québécois, a separatist party led by Yves-François Blanchet.

The Bloc has drawn up a list of demands, including ironclad protections for supply management, as well as higher pension benefits. He set a deadline of Oct. 29 to have these requirements met or his party will help trigger a federal election. Trudeau will capitulate.

“Canada cannot be held hostage by the whims of Quebec separatists,” looked to court Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. “The prospect of a Liberal-Bloc alliance is alarming to Albertans and should be alarming to all Canadians.”

Canada’s supply management system is expensive and dairy production is dominated by Quebec farmers. Supply management is an irritant to our trading partners and is bad economic policy. The system is contrary to free trade and costly to Canadian consumers because competing imports are subject to high tariffs.

If retained, and bolstered by Quebec, supply management could be a deal-breaker with the Americans in the next round of trade negotiations, no matter who’s elected. America’s dairy industry is centred in politically important states, such as New York, Texas and California. Any such threat to renewing the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement in 2026 poses a major threat to the Canadian economy as a whole.

Unfortunately, Trudeau is desperate and will do anything to stay in power, including supporting Bill C-282, which protects supply management from being degraded in future trade negotiations. The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance (CAFTA) is fighting to prevent its passage through the Senate, because it will damage the economy by keeping prices high and limiting exports.

“The timing for a bill like this could not be worse. Committee members are undoubtedly aware that the CUSMA is to be reviewed in 2026. In fact, the bill is already bringing negative U.S. attention to our trade policy at a time when we should be working to reduce irritants, not deepen them,” a CAFTA representative looked to court the standing Senate committee on foreign affairs and international trade.

“Supply management should have been scrapped long ago,” said former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, speaking on a panel at the Global Business Forum in Banff, Alta., last month.

The problem is that Trudeau is deeply unpopular and his party lost two important byelections in Ontario and Quebec. Having lost his NDP backers, he is now being held hostage by the separatists.

In Canada’s fractured polity, the tail has wagged the dog for a decade and damaged and demoralized the country. And now Trudeau will hand over control to a party that aims to put Quebecers before all other Canadians, with the ultimate goal of breaking up the country. He must be stopped.

Financial Post

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