OTTAWA — Parliamentarians this week will begin trying to develop 20/20 vision about the agriculture policy needed for the future.
The Commons agriculture committee has decided to begin a set of hearings on how national agriculture policy should evolve to serve the industry through to the year 2020.
The result, by the end of the year, could be a new “long term national strategy for agriculture … that will take the agri-food sector into the next century.”
Committee chair Bob Speller said politicians want to consult farmers and other players in the sector because they have decided agriculture bureaucrats are not doing enough forward planning.
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“One of the things we have found when talking to the department is that there is not a lot of forward thinking going on there,” he said. “The environment in which the industry exists is changing and I’m not sure policies are being changed to meet the new conditions.”
The committee study will take parliamentarians to the Prairies this summer to meet with farmers and visit the Canadian Wheat Board, Farm Credit Corporation and the biotechnology research centre in Saskatoon.
MPs spent more than an hour last week drawing up a wish list of issues they think should be dealt with in the “blueprint” they want to create.
Reform MPs want to use the exercise to push their vision of a deregulated, market-driven industry less influenced by government.
Liberal Wayne Easter said he wants a standard created by which the department’s performance can be judged in the future. With a yard stick of expectations, governments would be able “to fire them if they aren’t meeting their goals.”
Areas of concern
Others talked about the need to deal with regulations, relations between government and the industry and other issues.
They want to hear what farmers want from the government of the future, as well as how existing institutions work.
For this project, members of the Senate agriculture committee will be invited to sit on a joint committee with MPs. Both Houses will prepare their own reports, based on the evidence heard jointly.
In fact, the invitation to the Senate was one of the most contentious parts of the debate.
Both the Bloc QuŽbecois and Reform said they objected to giving senators a role and the BQ voted against the proposal because of proposed senatorial involvement. Reform said senators with experience in the agriculture policy area could be useful, as long as they did not take question and debate time away from opposition MPs.
There was also a dispute over how the committee should consult farmers.
Reformer Leon Benoit asked that the committee meet with farmers and not farm leaders, whom he said do not represent many farmers. He said the Alberta government has been successful in its attempts to consult average farmers, bypassing farm group leadership.
Easter insisted farm group leaders be consulted as representatives of their membership. He said he thinks Alberta’s Conservative government is “out of touch” with farmers.
