OTTAWA – The government is coming under increasing political pressure to trim the Pest Management Regulatory Agency down to a size farmers can more easily digest.
For months, the farm lobby has been complaining the PMRA plan to collect $16.5 million in cost-recovery fees from the industry is out of line.
In recent weeks, farmers have been lobbying on Parliament Hill and an increasing number of Liberal MPs have started to feel the heat.
The PMRA issue has been raised both in the national Liberal caucus and in Atlantic caucus in which health minister David Dingwall sits.
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“I can tell you the temperature is rising,” said one caucus participant about the private meetings. “Dingwall got an earful. The prime minister also has taken an interest in this.”
Last week, Ontario Liberal MP Murray Calder circulated to caucus members evidence of farmer concern and a recommendation that PMRA cost recovery be put on hold unless it is “proportional” to U.S. costs.
Calder said he is trying to arrange a meeting between caucus members, agriculture minister Ralph Goodale and Dingwall.
CFA president Jack Wilkinson said a political campaign seems to be the only way to influence Dingwall and the Liberals on the issue.
“I mean, we have been trying the route of working through the staff but that has not worked,” he said from his northern Ontario farm. “Politics is our only option now and finally, I think it is starting to bubble to the top.”
The farmer effort to get the costs down became even more urgent in the past several weeks as chemical manufacturers suggested that when their own costs are added to higher cost-recovery fees and new regulations, the real price tag for farmers and other chemical users could be in the $50 million range.
That brought a stinging response from the Ontario agriculture and environment coalition AGCare.
“We are alarmed by the seeming inability of PMRA and Health Canada officials to grasp the concept that such an approach to cost recovery would only serve to hamper the competitiveness of Canadian farmers,” said AGCare chair Bill Allison.
