Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz has refused to budge from his position that the federal government will not co-fund provincially designed farm support programs.
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff quickly said he would, if that’s what farmers want.
Ritz told Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Bette Jean Crews that he understands the need for regional flexibility in national programs and the need for provinces to be able to create business risk management programs for their farmers.
“There is a growing recognition that we need more regional flexibility,” Ritz said as he answered questions after a Feb. 23 speech to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture annual convention.
Read Also
U.S. loses out on sales of soybean to China
U.S. soybean exporters risk missing out on billions of dollars worth of sales to China this year as trade talks drag on and buyers in the top oilseed importer lock in cargoes from Brazil.
“In the next suite of Growing Forward, there will be more flexibility built into it to allow for companion programming.”
Crews said it was not enough to let provinces spend their own money.
Ontario has been funding a risk management program for three years. However, without federal support, it is only 40 percent funded.
“Even in our provincial flexible programs, we need federal buy-in, we need federal support,” she said.
Ritz stood firm.
“We do that in the vast majority (of cases), but when it comes to provincial stand-alone companion programs, we don’t.”
“That’s the problem,” Crews shot back. “It does not need to be stand alone.”
Later, Ritz told reporters he supports the ability of provinces to create income support programs their farmers need.
“But we will never put a federal component to that,” he said.
He said such programs are not part of the Growing Forward suite and would be vulnerable to trade challenges.
The following day, Ignatieff used a speech to the convention to announce that federal funding for provincial business risk management programs would be restored as part of a Liberal farmer-directed rewrite of farm policy if the party takes power.
Ottawa’s 60 percent funding for companion programs was phased out almost a decade ago under a previous Liberal government through a federal-provincial agreement on the first agricultural policy framework.
“Let’s put the flex back in AgriFlex,” he said.
“Let’s make sure we have federal assistance for agriculture.”
However, in a later interview, Ignatieff suggested he would use federal support for provincially designed programs as a form of equalization and not allow it to become a vehicle to create unequal farmer support between provinces.
A criticism of the old companion program rule was that wealthier provinces could launch a program that attracted federal co-funding while poorer provinces could not. It sometimes resulted in production migrating to provinces where support was richer.
