ARBORG, Man. – Farmers need the Manitoba government to stop talking and start doing.
If they don’t, some farm problems are going to fester into crises, says the president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.
“They studied some issues that are important to agriculture in the first term,” said KAP president Weldon Newton during the association’s local meeting in the Interlake area.
“This time they’ve actually got to put those into action.”
Newton said farmers need the government to bring in legislation clearing up the mess in municipal planning that has stymied many livestock operations.
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The province also needs to reform education tax so it is not unfair to farmers, and it needs to lay out modern and clear rules for water management.
The Manitoba legislature began a new session Nov. 20. The government’s throne speech contained few major announcements or startling new directions, but suggested the government intends to act on some of the issues it highlighted in its first term.
The day after the throne speech the government introduced an act that would force all automobile gasoline sold in the province to have a 10 percent ethanol content by 2005, and would give ethanol producers tax credits to encourage production.
In the speech, the government said it will bring in new rules for water quality, especially for Lake Winnipeg, which is fed by the Red and Assiniboine rivers that flow through much of Manitoba’s farmland.
It said it will dedicate all provincial gas taxes and any new share of federal gas taxes to highways, roads and municipal infrastructure.
It will encourage food processing, wind energy, ethanol and other developments to diversify the rural economy.
The new department of water stewardship will co-ordinate provincial water management and new rules will be laid down in a Water Protection Act.
Newton applauded the attention to water management, which he said is now governed by “six or seven acts, some dating back to the 1890s.”
But he said the government seemed to be avoiding much mention of the education tax issue and the municipal planning issue.
The government needs to clarify the rules on livestock operation approvals or the cattle and hog industries will continue to stagnate.
“Obviously the current process for livestock development is a community destruction process, not a community development process,” said Newton.
“It needs to be changed around so the proper expertise is put into it and the government puts the proper resources into it so that good decisions can be made and people who want to move ahead can move ahead in an environmentally friendly manner but also a financially viable manner.”
Progressive Conservative agriculture critic Jack Penner condemned the government for not offering any new programs to help cattle producers survive the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis.
