Prime minister Stephen Harper has cited loans to farmers and slaughter facilities as concrete examples of how the Conservative government is including the agriculture sector in its anti-recession stimulus spending.
“We have stepped in to protect our farmers and fishermen,” he told a Cambridge, Ont., audience June 11 as the government released a 229 page report on the progress of its stimulus spending program.
“We are undertaking measures like guaranteeing loans to help young farmers take over family farms (and) expanded slaughterhouse capacity for livestock producers.”
The government report card described the $50 million, two-year slaughterhouse capacity program as funds for the industry even though it is loans. Critics have complained the government is leaving the false impression the money is in grants rather than credit.
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The program was recently launched but no industry applications have yet been approved.
The government accounting also mentioned the $500 million AgriFlexibility funding, promising that project announcements will start early this summer.
Harper repeated a budget promise to invest in rural internet service.
Resource sectors like agriculture “are the industries that built this country and the communities they support are the very bedrock of this land.”
Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter heard the claims and scoffed.
In an $80 billion, two-year stimulus package, agriculture’s share is minuscule, he said.
The biggest ticket item is expanded government-backed credit for beginning farmers that could provide $1 billion over five years. The slaughter plant expansion program also involves industry debt.
Not a dollar of that new credit had been made available when Harper spoke, said the Liberal critic.
“And it is debt, not cash, for an industry already burdened by record debt,” said Easter. “One thing this government has been good at is adding to farm debt.”
He also noted that the broadband strategy has not been announced and dollars have not been spent.
