The governing minority Liberals are making good on recent promises made to those living in rural communities.
Cautious optimism was the feeling among many in the agricultural sector following the recent throne speech.
The optimism largely came from Ottawa’s commitment to enhance rural broadband access, pay compensation for supply-managed industries impacted by trade deals and look to agriculture to be an economic driver in the fight against climate change.
The caution came from reservations Ottawa would be able to follow through on these and other ambitious plans.
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Some critics pointed to the lack of prominence agriculture received in the throne speech, but few other industries got more attention than farmers did. Throne speeches are meant to speak to all Canadians, not individual groups.
Plus, many other areas that received specific attention, like health care, are at least as integral to our everyday quality of life as agriculture.
Two weeks after the speech, Ottawa is putting its money where its mouth is.
A government doing what it says it will do is about the minimum voters should expect of elected officials, but these days it seems citizens can’t expect much more than that.
The commitment to improve rural broadband access is being backed up by $2 billion to connect three quarters of a million households and small businesses. How fast that money rolls out is worth watching, but it is significant how quickly the federal government moved on its pledge to better connect rural communities.
It’s also significant the federal government continues to strongly confirm its commitment to compensating supply-managed industries for federal trade deals. Surely those producers would prefer that the compensation comes sooner rather than later, but by promising to pay at least some of the compensation by the end of the year, the government is signalling money is coming sometime in the next two months.
Ottawa is also poised to help unlock agriculture as an economic engine, in part by committing $1.5 billion to help fund agricultural irrigation projects on the Prairies.
Critics will want to see more for the sector and it’s fair to continue demanding more from our federal government.
Reforming business risk management (BRM) programs is the ultimate task that the federal government and Minister of Agriculture Marie-Claude Bibeau need to address, at least in the eyes of many producers and the lobbyists.
It will cost money to improve those programs, and the Liberals made no commitment to pay more and they did not commit anything at all on the BRM front in the throne speech.
At best, producers should hope the Liberals fulfill a promise they made while running for re-election in 2019, which is to do a “collaborative review” of the programs and be prepared “to increase federal support to farmers to help them manage risks beyond their control.”
Doing so hinges on Bibeau’s ability to get belt-tightening provinces to increase their contributions, which is no easy task.
So there are reasons to be cautious, but credit should be given to the federal Liberals for moving quickly to pay for at least some of the promises they recently made to the sector.
D.C. Fraser is Glacier Farm Media’s Ottawa correspondent. Reach out to him by emailing dfraser@farmmedia.com.
