AMID ALL the Conservatives’ verbiage about how they plan to change Canadian farm programs for the better, one promise in particular may come back to bite them.
Thanks to prime minister Stephen Harper, the government has promised to include cost-of-production factors in the program that will replace the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program.
As economists see it, that is far easier said than done.
“Cost of production has no place in income stabilization design,” a former public servant with extensive program design experience says bluntly.
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“Unless they are defining COP in a way I’ve never heard of, it’s a non-starter.”
Larry Martin, an agricultural economist and head of the George Morris Centre in Guelph, says it is a baffling promise almost impossible to implement in a way farmers would expect.
“If this is going to be a whole-farm program, I don’t know how you determine where to measure it,” said Martin.
“And if this is calculated on a commodity by commodity basis as a way to determine support levels, just watch the countervail actions start to fly. Put me down as extremely skeptical.”
It will be agriculture minister Chuck Strahl’s burden to find a way to translate Harper’s promise into program.
Interestingly, Strahl has not been promoting this part of the Conservative promise, hoping perhaps that it will fade from memory.
In fact, some farm lobby leaders say that in the weeks following his surprise appointment as agriculture minister Feb. 6, the new minister was denying that a cost-of-production promise had been made.
Unfortunately for him, at least one person won’t let him forget it: Stephen Harper.
The prime minister sees himself, and likes to be seen, as a man of his word. He promised it and nobody, least of all one of his handpicked ministers, is going to make a liar of him.
But what did Harper promise?
It came with just three shopping days left before Christmas when then-opposition leader Harper showed up in Chatham, Ont., with his shopping bag stuffed with goodies for farmers.
Among the promised presents was the end of the much-loathed CAIS program to be replaced with a new scheme that “will address, properly address, the costs of production, market revenue and inventory evaluation.”
That was it. Did he mean simply an expanded list of expenses that can be claimed under CAIS rules or was it a promise to introduce some COP calculation closer to the supply management model that includes allowance for labour and management, for example?
Whatever he meant, the promise was immediately noted by farmers and their leaders, although not highly touted by Conservative candidates.
It next surfaced in the party’s campaign platform document but again, not widely discussed or elaborated.
But lest the promise be forgotten, the prime minister returned to it April 6 in the House of Commons.
CAIS will be replaced, he said.
“The new program should properly address the cost of production, market revenue and inventory evaluation,” said Harper.
Strahl didn’t repeat the message in his speech but no matter. Putting policy meat on the bones is now his headache.
“Good luck to him,” said Martin. “I’m not sure what he can do that doesn’t create more problems, more complexity.”
Indeed.
