OTTAWA (Staff) – Reform Party MPs came to Ottawa last January with an agricultural reform plan they promised would cut almost half a billion dollars from government agricultural spending.
Since then, the Liberal government has announced a series of cuts to both farmers’ subsidies and government operating budgets.
The result, according to Reform Party figures, is that savings if Reform proposals were implemented would amount to just $176 million in the current fiscal year, not the $487 million first promised based on the 1992-93 budget.
“It is amazing how much they have cut,” Vegreville MP Leon Benoit said last week.
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Still, it doesn’t mean Reform thinks its budget-slashing ideas have been adequately adopted by the Liberals. Instead, the government has been announcing drastic cuts to direct payments to farmers while making much smaller cuts to the Agriculture Canada operating budget.
Benoit said the next generation of cuts should be inside the department.
“Farmers have taken the cuts in direct support without getting any of the benefits of a reduction in regulation or increased efficiency from the government,” he said in an interview as Parliament was adjourning June 22. “That is what still has to be done.”
Group various government support
Reform has proposed that government support for the industry be grouped into three broad funds – a crop insurance fund, a trade distortion adjustment program and an income stabilization fund.
Existing programs, from safety nets to the Crow Benefit, would be rolled into the new funds and cut back.
Government operating and capital costs would be scaled back as part of a Reform government effort to balance the budget in three years.
During this past session of Parliament, Reform proposed cuts in the department’s 1994-95 operating budget but the Liberal majority on the Commons agriculture committee rejected the suggestion as a publicity stunt.
They said the government is implementing cuts and criticized Reform MPs for refusing to say exactly where the new cuts should take place.
It is a debate that will continue when Parliament reconvenes in the autumn, Reform MPs vow.
