The Liberal government continues to send a mixed message of limited support to Canadian farmers: we’ll support you as long as it doesn’t cost much.
On Feb. 8, prime minister Jean Chrétien was in Washington, D.C., telling United States president George W. Bush that American agricultural subsidies are bad.
“I will express the strong position of the Canadian government … that our farmers should be able to compete on a level playing field and that subsidy wars are in the interest of no one,” Chrétien said in the House of Commons last week. “It is a very important item and one of the first I will discuss with him.”
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But the prime minister also reaffirmed that the Liberal government has no intention of cranking up Canadian farm support to competitive international levels if Bush does not agree to lower American subsidies.
Late in the week, meeting with a delegation of farmers demanding a national farm policy based on cost-of-production and “parity” with foreign subsidies, agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief rejected the COP idea but promised help is on the way.
“I related to them that I would continue to fight for them, emphasizing the fact that I have been fighting for them and with them,” he said.
“I thanked them for the visibility they have brought to the farm income situation and promised that I will continue to fight at the cabinet table and would be going to the cabinet table in the near future on their behalf.”
The comments from the prime minister and the agriculture minister came during a week in which the farm income crisis was a high priority in Ottawa as the new Parliament began business.
Farm lobbyists from the Prairies and Ontario were in Ottawa for the week, the government’s throne speech to open the new Parliament offered a vague promise of farm support and MPs from both government and opposition hammered home the need for farm support as new government figures projected declining income in much of farm country this year.
“Is the prime minister aware that farm incomes on average over the last five years have decreased up to 65 percent for grain farmers and the money sits on the cabinet table when it should be on the kitchen tables of the farmers?” Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day said in the Commons Feb. 2 as he pressed the government to get money already committed out to farmers quickly.
Deputy prime minister Herb Gray insisted that the Liberals will help farmers.
“(Chrétien) stood in his place in the House of Commons and talked about our desire to do the right thing for Canadian farmers,” he said.
But it remained unclear what the Liberals consider “the right thing” to be.
For farm leaders hoping for a clear promise of farm aid in the throne speech, there was only an ambiguous endorsement of Agriculture Canada’s latest theme — the life sciences “revolution” — as the way of the future.
“Research in life sciences will benefit all of Canada, particularly our agricultural and rural economies,” said the speech, read in the Senate Jan. 30 by governor general Adrianne Clarkson.
“The government will help Canada’s agricultural sector move beyond crisis management, leading to more genuine diversification and value-added growth, new investments and employment, better land use and high standards of environmental stewardship and food safety.”
MPs and farm activists watching the speech were uncertain if the promise was financial aid to help farmers “move beyond crisis management” or whether it was arguing that diversification into genetically modified crops and production of high-value health and industrial products is the ticket to ride.
