CANADIAN BUTTER.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 May 1926, Page 4

CANADIAN BUTTER.

AUSTR ALIAN COAfPETIT!ON.

VANCOUVER, A larch 24

Outside the peculiar political deadlock m Ottawa, caused by Premier King’s determination to hold on to office by his -eyebrows, one of the principal subjects discussed is the operation of tra.de treaties with Australia and New Zealand, whereby thousands of boxes of Antipodean butter are now flooding Canada, and the action of President Coolidge in raising the duty , on butter from 8 cents to 12 cents- a pound, thus practically prohibiting Canadian

imports through the powers conferred on the White House chief by the flexible provisions of the Fofdney-McCum-her Tariff Act.

Under the heading “Nice and Neighbourly ” the Toronto “Mail and Empire ” had the following pointed comment to offer; “We have heard before now of United States farmers and Canadian farmers, especially in the Western regions, making common cause for the benefit of their great food producing industry. Our own farmers must lie getting tlieir eyes opened as to the value of such professions of fellowship. Their cattle market in the United Stlites was wiped out at the instance of United States farmers by the Fordney tariff. The blow was a crushing one to the ranchers of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Canadian wheat is no longer consumed in tile United States, because after first imposing a duty of 30 cents a bushel, which at the time was .deemed prohibitory, the Fordncy tariff was afterwards hoisted to 42 cents a bushel. Our neighbours are very willing to take all we can send them of timber, minerals, etc., in the rough state. They want none of the products raised by our farmers.” The United States Government plead-

ed that the butter duty for foreign varieties had been raised owing “to the competition from Denmark,” but Canadian authorities, after making exhaustive investigations, discovered that no Danish butter is being imported into the United States at the present time! The Canadian dairymen are chiefly worried over the big importations of Australian flutter which are arriving with clocklike regularity in Canada, and, as might be expected, the AustralianCnnndihn trade treaty' is coming in for much criticism.

The Canadian “ Bulletin des Agriculleurs,” in a recent issue, discussing the flooding of Canada with Antipodean butter, said: “If the Australians .continue to invade our market with their butter, as they are now doing, the production of milk in winter, which is recommended on as large a' scale as possible by more than one agricultural authority, will have seen its best days. And so far as the provision of Australian butter for the Canadian market is concerned, who is to say that our warehouses will not he filled, from now on till the producing season, with Australian butter, which will maintain its price at a level ruinous to the Canadian farmer?”