OTTAWA (Staff) – An open-ended parliamentary study into the future of Canadian agriculture, planned as the agricultural centrepiece of the new session beginning this week, is in jeopardy.
Months of hearings and travel across Canada by a bevy of MPs and senators was announced last summer with some fanfare. But a committee source said last week that funding for the project is in doubt.
The committee is to submit a proposed travel budget of more than $200,000 this week to an increasingly tight-fisted Commons budget committee.
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Word is out that there is little money for committees in a shrinking House of Commons budget. Without the travel budget, the agriculture committee project would have to be pared down or even abandoned.
“It will be a battle,” said the committee source. “There is not an awful lot of money left in the pot. If the money isn’t there and the budget isn’t approved, the project would have to be scrapped or really cut back.”
The plan was to have committee members travel through Eastern Canada in October and Western Canada in November to meet with farmers and hold public hearings.
Meetings on the road would be supplemented by public hearings in Ottawa which begin this week. The object is to produce a report by next spring on future policy needs of agriculture in Canada.
A decision on funding is expected by next week.
Meanwhile, as MPs returned to their desks Monday after a break of more than two months, a number of agriculture issues lay on a crowded parliamentary agenda.
Agriculture minister Ralph Goodale has promised legislation to amend the Western Grain Transportation Act this session.
A government announcement on new pesticide registration rules is expected within weeks.
And announcements on safety net rules, budget cuts and a reduction in the size and scope of Agriculture Canada activities are expected as part of the government’s October economic statement and February budget.
The opposition parties will have their own agendas.
The Bloc QuŽbecois, with new agriculture spokesman Jean-Guy ChrŽtien and a separatist Parti QuŽbecois government to support them in Quebec City, will be turning up the rhetoric about how unfair federal agriculture policies are to Quebec farmers.
Reform MPs will be warning of an impending rail car shortage and calling for greater government efforts to reduce the size of the Agriculture Canada bureaucracy.
“One of the really big issues we will be pushing is the transportation issue,” said Saskatchewan Reform MP Allan Kerpan in an interview last week. “It looks like another car shortage is building for this fall and they don’t seem to have learned anything from last year’s problems. We will want to know why.”
