opinion
Money has been called the root of all evil, as well as the ultimate aphrodisiac. Both statements seem to be supported by the long, dreary debate over the Crow Benefit, including the latest proposals to change the method of paying it.
The benefit was created to offset loss of the low statutory rate for shipping grain, originally established in the Crowsnest Pass agreement of 1897.
Creating the Crow Benefit, in the form of annual government payments to railways for export grain movement, and allowing rail rates to increase gave the railways the money they needed to invest in improving their systems. But it did little to silence the Crow’s critics.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
As at least one commentator has joked, the Crow Rate and its successor, the Crow Benefit, have “been blamed for everything from warts to AIDS.” If Prairie grain farmers only received less money for delivering their grain at the local elevator, the Crow critics said, then great things would happen to livestock producers and many other diversified enterprises.
Meanwhile, other groups lusted after the dollars involved – about $720 million a year before the last federal Conservative government hit the benefit with two 10-percent cuts.
Both the root-of-all-evil types and the aphrodisiac types got something to cheer about last week, when the federal committee reviewing the issue suggested the Crow Benefit be paid directly to producers on an acreage basis for several years, then be rolled into national farm income programs.
Unfortunately, all the fuss over details of how to change the method of payment has obscured the real question here – why should the taxpayers of Canada pay farmers or the railways even $1 million, let alone several hundred times that amount?
Under the existing method of payment, the answer to that question is clear – the Crow has been an essential transportation subsidy, helping maintain a strategic industry and a major source of export earnings in a landlocked region far from export ports.
But if the method of payment changes, especially if the dollars are eventually rolled into general agricultural programs, how will the taxpayers’ question be answered in seven years or so? The money that now is the Crow Benefit would then be increasingly seen as just another handout that should be eliminated.
The Prairie grain industry was built on reasonable rates for moving grain to export ports, and both farmers and governments have invested heavily in grain export facilities. The industry has made massive economic contributions to the nation, and will again do so as export grain markets keep improving.
Not all change is good. There are sound reasons why the current method of payment was created and why the Crow Benefit should be maintained.
