Farm leaders will join politicians in debate on the floor of the Saskatchewan legislature next week, when the first session since the September election gets under way.
Premier Roy Romanow announced a short pre-Christmas session focusing on the farm income crisis will start Dec. 6. Farm leaders have been asked to join elected members during a Dec. 7 emergency debate, when the government will put forward a motion underlining its concern about the issue.
“Each organization will be allowed 20 minutes,” agriculture minister Dwain Lingenfelter said Monday.
“They can bring one or two or three members of their group and use that time to give speeches or answer and ask questions in the setting of the legislature. This will be the first time we’ve done that with farm organizations.”
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Lingenfelter wants the support of the legislature and farm groups through a unanimous resolution, which he will take to the federal-provincial agriculture ministers’ meeting in Toronto Dec. 8. He said this is one more way to keep pressure on Ottawa.
Last week he and others put the pressure on the federal standing committee on finance when it stopped in Regina during pre-budget consultations. They said farmers need money from Ottawa now.
Liberal committee member Roy Cullen, who earlier in the day said it might be time to help some farmers leave the industry, told them they made “a clear and convincing case.”
“For a Toronto MP it’s sometimes hard to relate … but we are trying,” Cullen assured them. But he asked Lingenfelter what he should say to his own constituents – a business person facing bankruptcy, for example – if he goes to bat for prairie farmers.
Beyond farmer’s control
Lingenfelter told him the situations are different, since farmers are going broke because they can’t compete with the treasuries of other countries.
Reform MP Ken Epp wanted to know what form long-term help for farmers should take, and how it would affect the federal budget.
“We know how much it will cost us to save the family farm,” replied Darwin Brown, representing the Wynyard Chamber of Commerce. “I think we need to ask how much it will cost us if we lose it.”
Groups will have another chance to make their point next week when the federal agriculture committee visits the Prairies.
