Three down and four to go.
British Columbia last week became the third province to sign onto the agricultural policy framework, even as critics accused federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief of using blackmail and the BSE crisis to force reluctant provinces to sign on.
Vanclief has insisted that the APF disaster fund will be a major source of help for cattle producers hurt by the bovine spongiform encephalopathy episode, once their provinces join.
Seven provinces must sign before the new Net Income Stabilization Account program, with its disaster component, can take effect. B.C. joined Alberta and Newfoundland as APF signatories. Other provinces so far have heeded the advice of their farmers to resist.
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Critics put a sinister spin on Vanclief’s insistence that provinces must sign the APF before their farmers will be eligible for mainstream disaster funding. Since the APF agreement-in-principle was signed by most provinces in Halifax a year ago, Ottawa has run into a wall of resistance from farmers over the program design and provincial governments listening to their farmers.
BSE, say the critics, has worked to Vanclief’s political advantage.
“The minister is using this crisis to push his own agenda,” Saskatchewan Canadian Alliance MP Gerry Ritz said June 12 in the House of Commons. “He is blackmailing the provinces to sign onto his … failed initiative, that much touted agricultural policy framework. Everybody in the West realizes that the APF can never work as a crisis management tool.”
Vanclief insisted it was not blackmail but a simple statement of fact that the only disaster program available to farmers is through the APF, since the Canadian Farm Income Program has expired.
Farm leaders also weighed in, since they have been raising doubts about the adequacy of the APF and noting that once provinces sign, farmers are locked in for five years whether the program turns out to be better or not.
“It is beyond imagination that the minister would tie a program he cannot sell to farmers and provinces to the BSE crisis to win more support,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said in a June 13 interview.
He said many farm leader members of the CFA have lost faith in the promises of the minister that he will co-operate with farmers in program design.
Saskatchewan farm leader Terry Hildebrandt has called for Vanclief to be replaced.
Grain Growers of Canada executive director Cam Dahl said his organization also believes Vanclief should not be touting the APF as an answer to BSE. GGC has been a critic of the APF business risk management program design.
