Author Topic: How many Canadians do we have?  (Read 36493 times)

Chenier

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Re: How many Canadians do we have?
« Reply #15: October 20, 2011, 01:12:17 AM »
If only the government sold the quota - at least they'd get revenues. It is in fact a monopoly syndicate.

On the other hand, quotas allow a market for bootleg maple syrup. Everyone knows that bootlegged stuff is always better than the legal stuff....

Precisely. The system is designed that the ones who profit are those who were in the industry *when the quotas were implemented*, and afterwards favors the old over the new. Because quota prices started as being quite reasonable, sometimes these are at first given freely in order to give rights to produce as much as they were producing before the quota system. Basically, it creates a cartel, where the established people don't even have to bother being competitive anymore because the law prevents competitors from growing to the same level they achieved prior to the quotas.

And of course, people who bought their quotas years ago, when they retire, sell them for considerably more than they paid for. The speculation over quotas is ridiculous.

And then indeed, we get lower-quality syrup at superior quality prices. There's a rating system for maple syrup, and yet you *never* see it on bottles and cans at the super store. That's because the higher quality syrup never reaches them.

I'm not sure if this also applies to maple sap, though. If it doesn't, I very much plan on buying sap instead later on... I'm convinced that boiling it myself will cost me less than buying syrup, and that many producers have excess sap potential they can't do anything with.
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