Canada’s Green party is proposing a radical overhaul in Canadian agriculture and farm policy including a promise of $425 million over three years to help farmers convert to organic.
It is the largest farm financial promise being made by any national party in the campaign for the May 2 election.
In the Green platform unveiled April 7, leader Elizabeth May said it was a promise to foster ” a healthy agriculture sector with support for those who wish to transition to organic farming.”
The platform proposes to overhaul the Canadian Food Inspection Agency mandate, end federal research investment in genetically modified varieties, improve the national rail freight system, guarantee farmer’s right to save seed and make developers of GM varieties responsible for any damages that drift from their crops creates for non-GMO farm operations.
The party plan is centred on the conviction that Canada’s modern agriculture system is broken and dangerous.
“Our food security and safety are threatened directly by agribusiness as factory farms crowd chickens, turkeys, cows and pigs into inhumane and unhygienic conditions, creating the risk of serious health threats from toxic spinach to mad cow disease and swine flu,” said the Green Vision document released with the election platform.
“Animals are often pumped full of antibiotics and hormones while many crops are now genetically modified and treated with pesticides.”
And CFIA oversight is not a guarantee that the food system is safe, it said.
“The CFIA has a credibility problem,” said the party. “CFIA has an inherent conflict of interest, mandated to regulate for food safety while at the same time mandated to promote Canadian food products in Canada and abroad.”
May said a Green government would fix that by changing the mandate to eliminate the agency’s role to eliminate “any obligation to promote Canadian agribusiness.”
It would require 100 percent BSE testing “as soon as the process of detecting BSE in blood samples is perfected.”
And a Green government would require increased monitoring of the effects of using antibiotics in animal agriculture and chemicals in crop production.
Although details of the pro-organic subsidies are not spelled out, the party says it would spend $75 million this fiscal year and $175 million a year for the next two years to support farmers who want to go organic.
The policy would be aimed at making organic “the dominant model of production” in Canada.
As it did in the 2008 election, the Green party is promising to support supply management while allowing small and family farms to produce outside the system if they are supplying a local market.
