As MPs prepared to leave Parliament Hill in mid-June, a veteran Ontario Conservative MP rose to support the critics of his own government for its lack of support for Ontario farmers.Gary Schellenberger, a seven-year veteran first elected as a rural Progressive Conservative from southwest Ontario, presented a petition supporting the Ontario Agricultural Sustainability Coalition in its bid to have Ottawa co-fund the provincial cost-of-production-based Risk Management Program.At the time, the provincial government was threatening to end a two-year pilot program allowing grain and oilseeds producers to buy COP-based income insurance if Ottawa did not begin to pick up 60 percent of the costs.As an MP, Schellenberger has an obligation to present petitions collected by his constituents but in this case, he made it clear he agrees with farmers who had signed.”Food production in Ontario is threatened by factors beyond the control of its farmers,” he told the House of Commons. “Federal and provincial programs designed to manage risk and stabilize income for farmers are no longer working favourably for the majority of producers and need to be repaired.”The petition called on Parliament to change the rules of the federal AgriStability program to allow the money to be used for province-specific safety net programs if that is what farmers want.By the end of July, the farm lobby had won at least a temporary reprieve from the Ontario Liberal government.Agriculture minister Carol Mitchell announced that the popular RMP will receive its provincial funding portion for the 2010 crop year. She also made clear Ontario will continue to pressure the federal government and agriculture minister Gerry Ritz to begin co-funding the program.”Ontario’s grains and oilseeds farmers have told me quite clearly that this program helped them reduce business risk and provided a sense of long-term stability,” she said at the July 30 announcement of the funding reprieve. “This government has listened and we have responded by extending this program a further year while we continue to work with our federal colleagues to address farmers’ concerns with the current suite of shared federal-provincial business risk management programs.”But based on the federal government’s response to Schellenberger’s petition, Ottawa appears to be in no mood to change its position on sending funds to province-specific income support programs.”The federal government is committed to further strengthening our national agricultural policies and will continue to work with the provinces and territories and industry to this end,” the government said in a response to the petition deposited in a vacant Parliament in August. “However, with regards to a new BRM program for provincial-specific commodity groups, the government of Canada supports policies that provide equitable treatment to all producers across Canada and avoids commodity-specific programming that could leave Canada susceptible to countervailing action.”When federal and provincial ministers meet, Ritz is far from isolated in opposing the Ontario demand that governments return to funding province-specific farm income support programs.A number of provincial ministers resist the idea because it would put more pressure on their governments from their own farmers to spend more money at a time when governments are trying to deal with deficits.
No federal money for Ont. risk management program
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