There has been both good news and bad news for the Reform Party in this season of political angst over falling farm incomes.
The good news is that the western-based party has been able to focus some of its attention on agricultural issues these past few months, making up for several years of neglect when rural MPs had a difficult time getting their farm questions onto the Reform agenda.
Reform has done a credible job of keeping sustained pressure on the Liberals to do something. That’s where the bad news starts to appear. To do what?
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To be charitable, the Reform message on the “what is to be done” question has been less than crisp and consistent.
To be less charitable, it has been unfocused, muddled and confusing.
The central problem has been that a party theologically committed to smaller government and no subsidies has a difficult time when confronted by farmers wanting help because they are losing $60 on every pig they sell or facing a catastrophic tumble in grain income.
Reform has hedged or offered mixed messages.
It would consider supporting a financial package, but only if it came as part of a package of tax cuts, reduction in user fees and a commitment to negotiate an end to international subsidies.
Does that mean the party would oppose help if it did not come with the other strings attached? The nuanced answers have been difficult to decipher.
It has led to stories suggesting Reform does not favor an early cash program.
Howard Hilstrom, agriculture critic, testily responded that was a misrepresentation of Reform policy. The government could move quickly on all those fronts if it wanted.
In the Commons recently, Alberta Reformer Ken Epp illustrated the party position. First, he demanded “disaster relief for those farmers today”.
Then almost immediately, he was calling on the government to “wake up and smell the coffee” by cutting taxes and negotiating “a trade agreement that works for everybody.” Got that?
Then, cattleman Hilstrom did not help the clarity of the cause by telling a television audience pig farmers have responsibility to take some action themselves.
In the cattle industry, when prices fall, herd liquidation begins to get the market back in balance. “Cattlemen don’t go crying for aid every time the price of cattle goes down and the hog industry has to get into that situation also.”
The Tories gleefully faxed transcripts of the interview out to those who might care. Then deputy agriculture critic Garry Breitkreuz muddied the waters even more.
An end to the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly is part of the answer, he said as he championed the cause of a small group of farmers who say they would give up their portion of any aid package if the government would simply free them from the Board. That’s the sound of another hobby horse bolting the corral.
So it will become easier for Reform when the government announces something. Then, like all other Opposition MPs, they will be able to end the confusion by chanting “too little, too late.”
