OTTAWA – Rural critics of the federal budget last week did not seem to object too much to what they saw.
It was what they didn’t see that bothered them.
“I was disappointed the finance minister didn’t use the budget to send a message that they recognize their cost recovery policy is a problem that must be fixed,” said Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Jack Wilkinson.
He also had hoped finance minister Paul Martin would announce new funding for the green plan, which ends this year.
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“That has been an important program for agriculture,” he said in an interview. “It would be an important signal if it was renewed.”
The CFA president said the promise to hook small rural communities to the internet is welcome and the $50 million equity payment to the Farm Credit Corporation is good news.
But he was unimpressed that these measures were the entire rural package.
“If this is the government’s election budget, it certainly isn’t counting on farmers to get it re-elected,” said a statement issued by Wilkinson.
Reform party agriculture spokesperson Elwin Hermanson could not have said it better.
“It’s sad really that other than a small communications package, all Paul Martin could offer rural Canada was the opportunity to go deeper in debt,” the Saskatchewan MP said in an interview. “The FCC payment isn’t bad news but if that is all there is for agriculture, it is sad. We would have liked to see tax relief.”
For Saskatchewan New Democrat MP Len Taylor, the budget was “disappointing for rural Canada and the farming community on the Prairies.”
The main problem, he said, is that the federal Liberals have not recognized the sacrifice grain farmers made when they lost the Crow Benefit rail freight subsidy for grain and the pain higher freight rates are causing.
The government promised the reward would be increased value- added and diversification activity on the Prairies, yet most of the value-added activity is taking place in major population centres, Taylor said.
“There should have been some financial or at the very least moral support for small communities trying to develop enterprise,” he said.
“The budget should have offered some aid or counselling for rural economic development projects.”
Taylor complained that the “rural component in the budget is virtually not there”.
And even the new money for the FCC was not necessarily good news, according to the NDP agriculture spokesperson.
He said the more tools the FCC has to offer farmers, the more it competes with small town credit unions.
“It may be useful in some specific cases but I don’t think in the general sense it is all that helpful,” said Taylor.
