As legislation made its way through Parliament this summer to authorize $4.6 billion in federal spending as the price the minority Liberal government paid to secure NDP support for the latest federal budget, the Conservative opposition condemned it as reckless spending.
But in Senate debate on the bill, which was passed July 20,Winnipeg Conservative Terry Stratton took a different approach.
He castigated the political co-operators for crafting an expensive preserve-the-government deal that he said ignores rural Canada.
“While one could definitely be critical of the fiscal recklessness that this bill represents, I would like to focus my speech on areas where the bill is lacking: the complete absence of anything for rural Canada and sectors of the economy important to rural Canada,” Stratton said as the Senate sat into a rare July session.
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“On agriculture, there is nothing in this bill.”
Stratton said it was a sign that Liberals and New Democrats mainly represent urban Canada. When they were cutting up the cash, the urban agenda was foremost.
Even on the issue of child-care spending, promoted by Liberals and the NDP as a national priority, the legislation is “silent” on the need for special arrangements for rural families, he complained.
The Winnipeg Conservative senator said it was a pattern.
“The public record must take note of the fact that when the Liberals decided to work with the NDP to do something extra, to do something above and beyond what had previously been planned for rural Canada, it was totally ignored,” he said.
While the NDP demands for extra spending mainly concerned city issues, including municipal funding, education and social housing construction, Stratton said the needs of rural Canada for better child care were not acknowledged.
And he noted that under the Liberals, the number of farmers and farm workers has been falling and most farmers have had to resort to off-farm work to survive.
“Now more than ever, the federal government should be working to fortify the position of producers as they confront challenges such as the BSE crisis, negative incomes, record low commodity prices, high input costs including fuel, and unpredictable weather such as we have experienced recently,” said Stratton, a member of the Senate agriculture committee. “Much to the chagrin of those on this side of the chamber, this need is nowhere more evident than in the calculation of the Liberal-NDP budget.”
Liberal Senate defenders of the budget bill said little about the lack of rural or farm support in the add-on $4.6 billion in promised spending.
