Barry Wilson

New Zealand has joined with the United States in protesting the way Canada prices its exported dairy products. In late December, the New Zealand government called for consultations with Canada, claiming the so-called “special milk classes” system of setting exported milk prices is just another way of subsidizing exports. “Canada will have 60 days to […] Read more

The United Nations World Food Program is appealing to the world to increase its response to the spectre of famine in North Korea. In 1998, it is pleading for more than twice as much aid as has been offered during the past three years. Since 1995 when floods first began in the poor Asian country, […] Read more

Airdrie, Alta., Smithers, B.C., Winkler, Man. and Arcola, Sask. will soon share more than the fact that they are all small, rural communities in Western Canada. Sometime later this year they all should be launching their first community internet sites. In early January, the federal government announced these communities, and 145 others across the West, […] Read more

The Liberal majority on the House of Commons international trade committee has endorsed Canada’s involvement in negotiations on a proposed treaty to protect foreign investors from government discrimination, without any recommendations to meet objections raised by farm representatives. After public hearings last autumn, the committee majority issued a report in mid-December arguing Canada has no […] Read more

While the leaders of Canada’s chicken industry spent much of the past year struggling to redesign the production allocation system, the industry back on the farm was experiencing strong growth. Consumers also were eating more chicken and Canadian exports were growing. Production costs fell in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. But farmers did not always […] Read more

A leading dairy industry spokesperson has denounced as “naive” and “misguided” a proposal from a Reform MP that the federal government organize a massive buyout of dairy quota, much as it paid off the Crow Benefit subsidy for grain farmers. Alberta MP Leon Benoit, deputy agriculture critic for the Reform party, said a quota buyout […] Read more

The Reform party, which is strong in the West, present in Ontario, known in Atlantic Canada, but invisible in Quebec, is using the Calgary Declaration on national unity to try to build a Quebec profile. After sponsoring an all-day debate in the House of Commons in late November encouraging Canadians to examine and debate the […] Read more

Two celebrated Alberta farm women, in the company of three of their fellow womens’ rights crusaders, will take their place among the prime ministerial statues that dot Ottawa’s exclusive Parliament Hill lawn. In October 2000, a statue will be unveiled honoring the Famous Five Albertans who went to court 70 years ago to win the […] Read more

Even through the latest version of the lengthy investigation into the grain transportation system has been launched with a Dec. 31, 1998 deadline, uncertainty hangs over the exercise. Will the review, headed by Willard Estey, be derailed if the Canadian Wheat Board case before the Canadian Transportation Agency drags on through the summer? The wheat […] Read more

Trade will rise to the top of the government’s agricultural agenda in the new year, according to federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief. In early January, he travels to Washington, D.C. for his first face-to-face meeting with American agriculture secretary Dan Glickman. Through the year, there will be continuing trade disputes with the United States, including […] Read more