Agriculture ministers plan to meet in Toronto during the last week of
November to discuss safety net programs for next year.
Saskatchewan minister Clay Serby recently told reporters that his
Ontario counterpart, Helen Johns, is organizing the one-day meeting
that he had called for in October.
“I’ve talked to all of the ag ministers across the country,” he said.
“They’ve all agreed to come.”
Serby said Johns is trying to find a meeting date that would
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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
accommodate federal minister Lyle Vanclief and Bob Friesen, president
of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and chair of the national
safety net advisory committee.
Two weeks ago, Serby and Saskatchewan farm groups met in Regina to
prepare.
“(We are) talking about Saskat-chewan’s position in terms of what we
need in a new agricultural policy framework safety net risk management
package, given that the federal government is not putting one new penny
into safety nets,” Serby said during a break in the meeting.
“As much as they talk about how they’ve enriched it, we’ve got pretty
much the same package of money to work with for the next five years as
we’ve had in the past.”
He said Vanclief’s recent statement that bilateral negotiations would
take place with provinces that had signed the APF was “one of the most
goofiest comments” he has heard.
Serby said if it is a national program, it should be negotiated that
way. Saskatchewan has not signed the APF.
He also criticized Vanclief for comments he made during an Oct. 7
emergency debate in the House of Commons. Vanclief said some provinces
– Saskatchewan in particular – don’t spend as much on agriculture as
they did in the past and should make it a priority.
Serby said information from Vanclief’s own department shows that
Saskatchewan supports its farmers four times more per capita than
Ottawa does.
“Secondly, he doesn’t talk much about the fact that it’s his government
that’s reduced the level of support for provinces,” he said. “Provinces
today pick up a far larger percentage of the cost share than ever.”
Serby said Vanclief’s performance during the debate was “dismal.”
But Vanclief stood firm in his opinion.
“I can show you the figures that over the last number of years,
Saskatchewan has gone from as high as 11 percent of provincial
expenditures on agriculture down to as low as five,” he said in Ottawa.
“That’s happened in the past 10 or 12 years. They’re now at around six
or maybe seven.”
According to budget documents for 2002-03, Saskatchewan spends five
percent of its general revenue fund on agriculture.
