Alright, lot of comments to respond here, I'll do my best.

> What makes you think the pros/cons they listed are just the price?

I think that because consumers (myself included) will always choose a commodity that costs one third less. The description of the differences is irrelevant.

> The article was dated August 2, 2017. If we checked the archived page as of jun 17, 2017, we see the $2.33/L price figure

Interesting. I don't think that's a relevant price, as people who buy milk generally do it in a 2L or 4L package. I'm glad statscan is now tracking more relevant data.

The price listed in their question as "no supply management $1.50/L" lines up pretty close with actual market costs for a 2L or 4L package of milk, while the other one is enough of a price premium to be absurd for what shoppers consider a staple.

> The hypothetical non-supply managed prices were obtained by taking the current price and dividing by 3 (which was the suggested price premium according to University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy)

It matters because the non-supply-managed-price matches the actual market cost for supply-managed milk. That said, if the question had used $1.25/L and $0.83, the survey respondents still would've selected the cheaper one. Run the same question again and ask if consumers would prefer $1.25/L Canadian milk or $0.83/L American milk and I think you'd get a response more accurate of both what the outcome will be and what the consumers' opinion is.

Interestingly, reading the original report from the UofC [1], they used the 1Litre price and applied a "typical" 2.7 cost multiplier to get an estimate of the 4L price (at 6.02-6.48 for 2010-2012), and compared it with the real 3.8litre price from US Bureau of Labour statistics. The earliest statscan data currently available (from 2015) shows it at $5.52 and slowly steadily increasing to $6.05 in June this year. So their estimated cost differential is off by 10-15% right off the bat due to lack of data and a poor assumption. The paper also picks and chooses whether to compare supply-managed sectors to other agricultural sectors in Canada, or to the equivalent sector (eg dairy) in other countries - I don't find this to be rigourous. They quote the "mere" 12,786 dairy farmers in Canada - without comparing it to the size of dairy industries in comparable countries. Eg the US is down to ~30k dairy farms. I got a bit bored of skimming it to be honest, but I didn't find it to have even attempted to remain unbiased.

> 1. this is a sneaky moving of the goalposts from "most" to "majority"

It wasn't sneaky. That's why I put a smiley-face. It was somewhat satirical moving of the goalposts.

> 2. Maybe en-CA has a different definition for "majority", but the definition on wiktionary unambiguously states that it has to be greater than 50%. maybe you're looking for "plurality"?

Sure, plurality. I wasn't being too precise.

> 3. even if we use "plurality", using that to paint the picture that the policy has widespread support is misleading, especially when it's split pretty close 3 ways. At best it can be called "mixed".

Ok

> I don't get it. Why arbitrarily exclude people of a certain political affiliation?

I wasn't excluding them. I was explicitly including them. Read it again without the parenthetical clause. The equivalent statement would be "most [a plurality of] people disapprove of Biden, even including democrats"

To further expound on my position: I don't believe that supply management is perfect by any means. I think particularly the price of quota is too high, and this has a chilling effect on new entrants and novel ideas. I don't believe the solution is to remove quota, but other options are possible (eg have quota only available to buy from and sell to the relevant board to prevent profiteering on quota sales, or maybe have farmers require to "lease" quota annually, or maybe increase maximum herd/flock exemption limits (particularly notable with laying hens) to allow new entrants with novel ideas to compete on a small/local basis, maybe tie some fees to carbon reduction/addressing climate change, maybe provide tariff exemptions/reductions for novel products not available on the Canadian market). All that said, protection of the domestic industry for certain staples is worthwhile, and doing it with supply management rather than taxpayer subsidies is a lot more fair in my opinion.

[1] https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/suppl...