Ottawa is regulating the family farm out of existence

We’ve turned the right to farm into a debt trap that no young Canadian can afford to carry

In medieval England, the Sheriff of Nottingham jailed poor peasants for daring to hunt deer in the King’s Sherwood Forest to feed their starving families. Today, 89 per cent of Canada belongs to the Crown, meaning federal or provincial governments control most of the land, and small family farms and ranches are increasingly treated like those peasants: punished by regulations that only the largest operations can survive.

Policy Horizons Canada’s January 2025 brief, Future Lives: Social Mobility in Question, lays out a scenario for Canada in 2040 in which downward social mobility becomes the norm, with more people relying on bartering, small-scale food production, hunting, fishing and foraging. The authors stress it is not a forecast but a stress-test for current policy assumptions.

Even as a stress test, the picture is sobering because many of the policies driving that future already exist.

The clearest example is supply management, Canada’s system of quotas and import barriers that controls dairy, egg and poultry production by restricting supply and limiting competition.

Marketed as protection for producers from low prices, it functions as a government-backed cartel.

New or expanding producers must first purchase quota at enormous cost. That quota can be bought and sold like an asset, and for many new entrants it has become one of the biggest financial barriers to even getting started.

In Quebec and Ontario, the dairy quota is capped at $24,000 per kilogram of butterfat per day. In Alberta, where there is no cap, the exchange averaged roughly $56,500 per kilogram of butterfat per day in early 2025, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

For layer hens, quota in Alberta has recently traded between $755 and $800 per bird. A modest 1,000-hen operation, therefore, requires up to $800,000 upfront just for the right to produce eggs.

The result is predictable: fewer independent producers, less competition and a food system increasingly dominated by large operations with access to major capital.

Defenders of the system note, fairly, that current quota holders bought their quota at market value and that any reform must address how to compensate them for the value tied up in those quota holdings.

But this is a transition design problem, not a reason to leave the system as it is.

In April 2025, five RCMP cruisers arrived at Sundial Poultry near Lethbridge, Alta., to arrest 61-year-old Henk Van Essen during a four-year dispute with Egg Farmers of Alberta over alleged violations of the 300-hen small-flock limit. Alberta allows small non-quota flocks below that threshold, but larger commercial production requires quota.

Van Essen viewed the quota rules as overly restrictive and costly for small producers and had tried at least once to enter the Egg Farmers of Alberta’s new entrant program without success. He also held a Canadian Food Inspection Agency licence to grade and sell eggs under the Sundial Poultry label.

The case highlighted how aggressively the broader regulatory system now polices even modest-scale farming.

Supply management does not just restrict entry. It also contributes to waste in order to preserve price stability, according to a 2025 peer-reviewed study in Ecological Economics.

The study estimated that seven to 10 billion litres of raw milk were disposed of on Canadian dairy farms between 2012 and 2021: enough to supply 4.2 million people for an entire year.

This deliberate destruction keeps retail prices elevated while food bank demand grows and more Canadians struggle to afford groceries.

The pressure on small producers does not stop with quotas.

Since 2018, retailers like UFA in Alberta have dramatically reduced or eliminated over-the-counter sales of many vaccines, nutritional products and medically important antibiotics in line with Health Canada’s Dec. 1, 2018, prescription rule.

Producers must now establish a Veterinary-Client-Patient Relationship before obtaining prescriptions, typically requiring recurring farm visits and additional fees.

The pressure continues with the CFIA’s proposed amendments to Part XV of the Health of Animals Regulations, which would have expanded traceability rules for cattle movements.

The ranching industry pushed back hard, citing tens of millions of dollars in annual costs, impracticality for extensive grazing operations on Crown land and insufficient consultation. In January 2026, the CFIA paused the changes indefinitely.

Taken together, the message to small producers is clear: smaller-scale farming and ranching are becoming increasingly unviable.

When guardrails become roadblocks and one-size-fits-all regulations ignore the realities of family operations, only the largest producers, with the capital, lawyers and lobbyists to navigate the system, gain an advantage.

It is time to amend legislation to make it easier for small producers to sell into the food supply.

With food bank usage rising and the cost of beef, pork and chicken climbing faster than in most OECD countries, Canada cannot afford policies that restrict supply, reduce competition and drive out independent producers.

Otherwise, the Sheriff of Nottingham continues to win, and more families may soon be forced to forage on Crown land just to put food on the table.

Dr. Joseph Fournier is a rancher, a Ph.D. scientist, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. With over 15 years of experience as an energy executive and a background in chemical physics, he provides an analytical perspective on agricultural regulation, industrial productivity, and the practical challenges facing Canada’s primary producers.