Senior bureaucrats in the federal finance department are likely to hear brutal and direct assessments next week of the weakness of Canada’s grain sector and the inadequacy of Agriculture Canada policies to deal with it.
And they’d better listen.
The visit to finance department offices Oct. 19 by a delegation from Saskatchewan has been prompted by and organized by finance minister Ralph Goodale and his office. The group is to meet Goodale in the morning and some members of the delegation have long ties to the Saskatchewan minister.
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In the afternoon, delegation members are scheduled to meet senior department officials.
Goodale said in an Oct. 3 interview it is an attempt to make sure finance officials understand the grain sector issue. It is not an end-run around Agriculture Canada.
“I suppose once minister of agriculture, it’s always in your system,” he said.
“And I think it is important that the whole apparatus of the public service understand the full dimensions of agricultural issues. The good people in the department of agriculture are steeped in those issues but it helps when you’re devising policies, and policies for the future, to have a broader range of contacts and a broader platform of understanding.”
The message the finance bureaucrats will hear is expected to be blunt.
University of Saskatchewan agricultural economist Hartley Furtan, a former deputy agriculture minister in Saskatchewan, will argue that under current conditions, the prairie grain industry is not sustainable.
“The message I’m bringing is that as it stands now, we are not competitive,” Furtan said in an Oct. 3 interview from Saskatoon. “Grain farmers will not even be able to cover their variable costs this year and looking at projections, there is no reason to believe this is not a trend line into the future.”
Once he is finished, the more politically connected members of the group will offer their analysis. Current programs put forward by Agriculture Canada are not working and a new approach is needed.
University of Saskatchewan agriculture college professor and longtime Liberal activist and adviser C. M. (Red) Williams will be part of the group.
He said in an interview current agriculture support programs, including the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program, are not doing the job.
“The APF (agricultural policy framework) runs out in two years,” he said. “Some of us feel it is time to go back to the well and come up with a Canadian farm bill.”
He said CAIS is flawed in part because support levels are based on a rolling historic income average that has been declining each year because of the disastrous grain economy.
“It’s all well and good to use CAIS but if the Olympic average is grinding you down, you have to get out of the business,” he said. “That is what is happening and it is not good enough. The folks in Ottawa have to be told that what is in place is not working.”
Williams would not confirm it, but a source familiar with preparations for the trip to Ottawa said last week there will be a recommendation that a special panel be created to investigate the grain sector’s plight, its growing lack of competitiveness and possible solutions.
One name that may be proposed to lead the hearings is former Canadian Wheat Board minister and Goodale political mentor Otto Lang, 73, who was an executive in the grain elevator system after leaving politics.
Goodale said he wants his senior bureaucrats in Ottawa to understand the grain sector as they take part in government policy discussions.
“It is an exercise in good solid communications,” he said. “The more broadly based and accurate the understanding of the issue is, the better.”
