Federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief last week denied Ottawa is treating flood-damaged Peace River farmers less generously than Ontario and Quebec ice-damaged farmers. “There is no double standard,” he said in the House of Commons April 24. But Vanclief also has not announced new federal help for Peace River farmers as requested by the Alberta […] Read more
Stories by Barry Wilson
Nature snaps trees; gov’t bureaucracy shatters patience
CLAYTON, Ont. – In Don Dodds’ 60 years, there never had been a week like it. For five days last January, the freezing rain fell and after the second storm, he began to hear the cracking sounds from his sugar bush as branches and treetops snapped and crashed to earth. It was the ice storm […] Read more
Ontario farmer marvels at maples’ survival instincts
CLAYTON, Ont. – It is a safe bet that before this year, Don Dodds had not spent a lot of time thinking about the IQ of the maple trees that dominate the 35-acre sugar bush he operates west of Ottawa. In the aftermath of the January ice storm, which devastated large areas of the maple […] Read more
Tribunal to churn over butteroil options
For at least the next two months, the political, economic and statistical controversies swirling around the tariff-free imports of a cheap cream substitute used in ice cream making will have to take a holiday. For dairy farmers, the issue is nothing less than the integrity of supply management and the government’s support of the system. […] Read more
Farm incomes up, depending on interpretations
The latest batch of government-compiled farm income numbers indicating that incomes are rising brought a familiar disagreement last week over what they mean. Statistics Canada reported that in 1996, farm operators recorded a 2.6 percent increase in their earnings. Farm leader Jack Wilkinson denounced that claim as misleading. He credited the increased income to off-farm […] Read more
Influential groups seek share of federal surplus
It was inevitable. Quietly, the line of farm lobbyists hoping to receive a slice of the federal government’s budget surplus is beginning to form. It presents agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief, an honest and straightforward fiscal conservative, with a difficult political file to handle this summer. He will have to figure out how to balance his […] Read more
Sask. calls for halt to cheap cream substitute
If the federal government does not move quickly to plug the supply management loopholes that importers of butteroil have been using to bring a cream substitute into the country, supply management will be threatened, the Saskatchewan government says. In a letter to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, which is considering whether the dairy industry should […] Read more
OTTAWA NOTEBOOK
The board of directors of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association will approve a proposal that a private corporation be formed to collect and distribute money raised from a national cattle checkoff. Once the checkoff is organized, the funds collected will be used for research and promotion. At a recent board meeting in Ottawa, CCA leaders accepted […] Read more
PCs will elect new leader this fall
This fall, the federal Progressive Conservative party will select its fourth leader in five years and one familiar Alberta face could be in the running. For the first time, the leader will be selected by a vote of individual members rather than through the hoopla of a national delegate convention. By the end of April, […] Read more
Bureaucrats, not politicians, tell farmers the truth
It used to be that in our political system, the politicians told voters the unpleasant truths, prepared to pay the price for laying out the consequences of policy choices. In public, bureaucrats were afraid of their shadows, saying no more and usually less than they knew the politicians were prepared to say. They did their […] Read more
