Saskatchewan agriculture minister Mark Wartman says the federal government has it in for his farmers.
“There are some people somewhere in the bureaucracy down there who believe that there are too many farmers in Saskatchewan.”
It appears to be a policy development goal to get rid of a lot of farmers in his province, said the minister.
Wartman’s comments were part of a tirade against the federal Liberals prompted by a question about Alberta’s recent enhancements to the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program.
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
He lambasted the Liberals on everything from botching the federal farm safety net program to getting rid of the Crow Benefit.
But much of his anger centered on the touchy subject of provincial oil and gas royalties.
Wartman accused Ottawa of clawing back hundreds of millions of dollars from provincial coffers instead of providing Saskatchewan with the same lucrative energy revenue sharing deal given to the Atlantic provinces.
“I am angry about it. I am really irate that a nation would make those different kinds of deals and basically abandon this province,” he said.
Inequitable federal programs are hurting vulnerable Saskatchewan farmers on many fronts, said Wartman, who also blamed Ottawa for last week’s announcement that Alberta is unilaterally changing the CAIS program.
Alberta is using a different method to calculate producer reference margins that it estimates will deliver an extra $224 million to the province’s farmers for the 2003-05 program years.
Wartman said a deeply flawed, poorly designed federal farm safety net forced Alberta to take matters into its own hands.
“It sets up a disparity between our farmers and their farmers. We want good, solid, national programming, not the kind of garbage that has been thrown out by the federal government to this point,” said the Saskatchewan cabinet minister.
Despite an estimated $873 million budget surplus, Saskatchewan will not be following Alberta’s lead by making amendments to the way it delivers the CAIS program.
Wartman said the province will be paying out more than Alberta on a per capita basis simply by meeting its 2005 CAIS commitments and doesn’t have the wherewithal to make enhancements to the program.
“Those farmers in Alberta are fortunate that their government can add supplementary funds,” he said.
Manitoba is also sticking with the original program, said provincial agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk, who, unlike Wartman, directed her anger toward the Alberta government.
“We all say we want to move away from ad hoc programs and what Alberta has done here is really to create another ad hoc program.”
She said changes to the CAIS program require the signature of five provinces, yet Alberta moved ahead without the endorsement of any of its partners.
“I can tell you that other provinces had reviewed the Alberta proposal and didn’t support it because of where it was going to drive the costs of the program.”
Wowchuk said CAIS is already plenty onerous for provinces like Manitoba where there is a high proportion of grain production.
Her government recently announced an extra $15 million for the 2005 CAIS program in the Oct. 27 throne speech.
“We think our numbers in this province will be quite high given the difficult season we have had and the drop in production we have seen.”
Wowchuk said amendments were made to the reference margin calculation at the last agriculture ministers’ conference and if further tweaking is required, it should take place through the agricultural policy framework review panel, which is scheduled to deliver its first interim report by the end of this year or early 2006.
