WINNIPEG – Prairie farm leaders want election candidates to promise that the next federal government will improve farm programs.
They also want candidates to pay more attention to agricultural issues.
“I think the issue is under-represented in the campaign debate,” Wild Rose Agricultural Producers president Humphrey Banack said April 15 after a meeting with counterparts from Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
“It’s hard to get food into the agenda when health and jobs dominate. A safe food supply is taken for granted, so it is hard to make it an issue.”
Banack joined Keystone Agricultural Producers president Doug Chorney and Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan president Greg Marshall for a one-day meeting to settle election issues priorities.
They agreed on three priorities:
- Improving farm support programs under the Growing Forward framework, including more timely and predictable AgriStability payments and government payments for farmer environmental practices through a national Ecological Goods and Services program.
- Implementing recommendations from the Rail Service Review, including legislation to balance the obligations and penalties between the railways and shippers.
“It is imbalanced now and if the railways had been doing a good job, we wouldn’t have these complaints,” said Chorney.
“They haven’t been and the railways have used up their good will. We want some action to balance the system.”
- Reviewing Canadian Grain Commission proposals for user fee hikes to cover a greater portion of its perennial operating deficit that government now covers.
Chorney said the provincial farm organizations want a review of the cost increase proposals to make sure all sides of the industry are paying their fair share.
Farmers have complained that the commission’s fee hike proposals have been made without sufficient consultation or adequate explanation of the sharing of costs.
“The prairie farm leaders are open to discussions on reviewing the cost recovery of the Canadian Grain Commission, but we want an approach that is fair and sustainable,” said Chorney.
He said taxpayers, the grain industry and farmers should all pay their share.
The farm leaders said they will try to get formal answers to their requests from all candidates running in their provinces.
Meanwhile, the election has apparently stalled a Grain Growers of Canada appeal against the grain commission’s fee increase proposal.
The national farm lobby lodged a formal complaint under the Consultations Act, complaining that due process was not followed because the final CGC recommendations were published almost immediately after the deadline for submissions, which suggested that the commission had already made up its mind to recommend higher fees.
“The reality is that all of the fees as currently proposed will flow back as a direct cost to producers, and given the scope and amounts involved, will have an impact on our bottom lines,” grain growers president Stephen Vandervalk said in a complaint to grain commissioners filed March 31. “Therefore, we respectfully insist this process be delayed until such time as our complaint is dealt with as per the provisions in the User Fees Act.”
The legislation calls for creation of a tribunal to adjudicate the complaint.
Last week, grain growers’ executive director Richard Phillips said the CGC responded that it will not respond now because of the election campaign.
He said that suggests the process of trying to increase user fees is temporarily frozen.
