Canadian farmers will have access to an improved set of business risk management programs when current ones expire March 31, 2008, federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz promised last week.
He held a conference call with most provincial ministers Oct. 18 and will meet with them face-to-face Nov. 15-16 in Toronto to try to make the final cost sharing and program design decisions.
“There’s a lot of hard work left to do but having said that, I see an agreement from the provinces and the federal government to move ahead on these issues,” he said Oct. 19. “We know what needs to be done. It’s a question of funding it, moving ahead over the next five years.”
Read Also
New coal mine proposal met with old concerns
A smaller version of the previously rejected Grassy Mountain coal mine project in Crowsnest Pass is back on the table, and the Livingstone Landowners Group continues to voice concerns about the environmental risks.
Ritz said he is prepared to promise farmers that they will have new farm income support programs in place April 1. Non-business risk management (BRM) programs, including farm environmental plans and food safety programs, will not be ready and existing programs will be extended until final details are worked out.
“We want to send a solid signal to producers that we will be there, programming will be there and there will be transitional time on the non-BRM, environmental farm plans and other programming that need transitional time,” the new federal minister said. “Absolutely on the new business risk suite, definitely, I’ll die trying and provincial ministers will as well.”
Federal-provincial negotiations were last held face-to-face in Whistler, B.C., in late June. Since then, there has been a change of federal minister, two provinces have had elections and Saskatchewan is in the midst of an election.
The political uncertainty has delayed the next round of attempts to find compromise on key issues of cost sharing and definitions of disasters and interprovincial fairness.
“There is a tremendous amount of anxiety and angst out there as to what those programs will look like,” Ritz conceded. “I was one of the largest critics of the old Liberal programs that were never very farmer friendly. It’s one thing to be able to announce money but another thing to actually be able to deliver it.
“I am not a big fan of ad hoc programs. I want to see bankability and stability in programs that are announced, both for provinces and the producers.”
He said provincial ministers become disgruntled when Ottawa unilaterally announces new spending without provincial agreement: “There’s nothing that upsets an agriculture minister from the provinces (more) than all of a sudden seeing an announcement and saying, ‘oh my God, now I’ve got to find 40 percent of what?’ “
Still, Ritz said he wants the focus of future agricultural policy to be on innovation rather than farm income support.
