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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Ignorance
I guess we all have the fantasy
now and then, especially this time of
the year. I've been dreaming lately,
when things get tough around the
office, about heading to some warm
island where the
living is cheap.
By selling every-
thing I own here
in Canada I
might get along
for quite a while.
Writers and
painters have
been subject to
this fantasy for a
long time. Greece
and Spain have
been destinations
for many who
wanted to stretch
their money
while they ind-
ulge themselves in practicing their art
full-time instead of having to squeeze
it in around working at a day job.
But there's something morally
disturbing in this when you think
about it. The only reason I'd be able
to live a relatively good life on one of
those islands is because the people I
was living with have such a poor
standard of living. If you go to Haiti,
for instance, where annual incomes
are measured in the hundreds of
dollars, you could live well compared
to the rest of the population on what
many Canadians spend in a week on
beer and potato chips.
But then that's what we all want
wherever we live isn't it: we want top
buck incomes and half -buck
expenses. Our standard of living in
Canada has been based on high
Canadian wages while we clothe
ourselves in garments made in sweat
shops in the third world, listen to
radios and televisions made by people
making pennies an hour and eat food
produced by people who can't make a
living producing it. Don't ask us
about the morality of our living well
at the expense of those who live in
poverty; we just don't want to know
about it.
Which is why, I think, the
majority of the population won't shed
a tear if supply management bites the
dust in the GATT talks. It's also why
is guilt free
supporters of supply management just
can't get their story told in the main-
stream urban media. Urbanites just
see that cheap chicken in Buffalo, or
ice cream at prices that look ridicul-
ously lower than prices in Ontario and
figure they deserve those prices here.
Roy Maxwell, in Ontario Chicken,
the newsletter of the Ontario Chicken
Producers' Marketing Board, recently
talked to a group of U.S. broiler
growers who have set up The
National Contract Poultry Growers
Association to try to win a better deal
from the integrated companies that
control the industry in the U.S. The
companies provide the chick, provide
the feed and process and sell the
chicken. The producers get about four
cents a pound for the chickens they
raise. From that they pay for the land,
the costs of the barns, the taxes and
all other overhead. One grower, who
had all his buildings paid for, raised
175,000 chickens in 1991, from
which he grossed $29,000. After his
expenses such as repairs and utilities,
he had $500 for himself. If he had to
replace those buildings, it would cost
him a minimum $250,000, he
estimated. Another grower raised
300,000 chickens and paid taxes on
an income of $12,000.
The U.S. growers were astounded
that Canadian chicken farmers could
make a living from their job.
Opponents of supply management
don't want to hear that. They want to
think that supply -managed products
in Canada are more expensive
because of inefficiency, not that the
"free enterprise" model in the U.S.
operates on what amounts to slave
labour. Most urbanites claim they
want farmers to have a decent living
but they somehow think that the
marketing board itself drives up costs.
You can't make them see that they'll
only get U.S.-style prices by creating
rural poverty.
What's more, they don't want to
hear anything different. Isolated as
they are, they'll probably never
change either. It's too comfortable to
live in ignorance.0
Keith Roulston is editor and publisher
of The Rural Voice as well as being a
playwright. He lives near Blyth, Ont.
l