Legislative_Assembly

Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald: Butterfat. \Valter R. Shaw: Butterfat. Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald: Yes.

2,828 patrons sold cream for butter during the year and this represents a de- crease of 515 patrons from 1966 which I will explain later.

Cheese production for the year showed an increase of 18.6% over 1966. Dur- ing the year 2,349,000 lbs. were manufactured and the gross value of cheese made was $1,081,000, the average price received for cheese was 46.3 cents.

I must say a word on cheese as there was some reference made about cheese in the House the last day or two. We have a surplus of cheese on Prince Edward Island, but it has pretty well liquidated itself through measures taken by the De— partment of Agriculture, and one of the measures taken is that we are subsidizing the shipments of cheese to Newfoundland chiefly by two and one-half cents per pound

subsidy on the freight. Some Member: Provincial?

Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald: Provincial. We have been doing this for a number of months. I did not release it at the time, I will tell the House why I didn’t release it, it was because we have high competitors across the line and we figured if they were aware of the fact, they could do this much easier than we could. Competition

is very stiff in cheese.

J. Walter Dingwell: Could you suggest, then, why the price of milk should have gone down this winter?

Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald: This would be, Honourble Mr. Speaker, actually, would be a plant. I think. perhaps, I could suggest why: less quality and operating costs a little more, or at least this is the excuse they give me when I asked them anyway,

this is the excuse they give me.

What makes our cheese markets so very competitive? Quebec produces 60,- 000,000 lbs. of cheese and Ontario 80,000,000 lbs. Quebec of course moved into the Newfoundland market and this is the reason that we put on this subsidy. We have had this on all fall so we could compete with those people and the Honourable Leader of the Opposition remarked the other day about cheese production in Nova Scotia, which we know there is a plant set up in Truro that is having a little difficulty at present on the quality, must have felt sorry about this. But we do think that cheese will right itself and we have cheese, which we purchased as a Department, stored over in Moncton and we are certainly trying to sell, we now have a deal worked out with a firm in this Province, and they are bringing a packaging machine and setting it up in Morell and they are going to package cheese in small packages so possibly we will be able to....

J. Walter Dingwell: I am sorry Mr. Minister, I don’t like to be interrupting, but this is particularly interesting to me. I was wondering what this 21/27. subsidizing in

respect to cheese milk, to cheese?

Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald: The cheese is manufactured, the cheese we will say is in the whole units of the manufacturing plants, and they were making their sales outside of this Province, so Quebec were offering cheese to Newfoundland so was Nova Scotia for we will say, we will use a figure—44c. Now this is not the exact figure, it is a fraction off, and we needed 46c, our processing plants needed 46c to have a margin at all so they came to see me and what we did was subsidize them 21/2c per lb. on freight so they could sell it over there for 44c, and then they would not still have to remove any prices to the producers of milk for the cheese. It balances

out.

J. Walter Dingwell: You don’t know what this represents in respect to a pound of milk, a hundred pounds of milk?

Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald: Do you mean how much? It takes ten pounds of milk to make a pound of cheese.

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