With MPs back on Parliament Hill this week and the explosive Canadian Wheat Board debate largely behind them, most agricultural issues will fly below the radar in the winter session.
The House of Commons agriculture committee will return to its low-key hearings on the next generation of Growing Forward programs with a report not expected before March.
Opposition MPs will try to bring before the committee lingering questions about life after the CWB monopoly and the effect on food safety of projected job cuts at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, but the Conservative majority will have the numbers to block those suggestions.
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However, agricultural issues are definitely embedded in what will be the centrepiece of the government’s parliamentary agenda for the year — presentation of the deficit-cutting 2012 budget in March.
All departments have been ordered to draw up plans that would see expenditures cut five to 10 percent.
That has opposition agriculture critics worried and industry leaders nervous.
“I have a lot of fears about the impact this budget will have on the agriculture budget and programming,” New Democrat agriculture critic Malcolm Allen said.
“I fear costs will be downloaded from government to industry and farmers. I fear that cuts at the CFIA will undermine food safety.”
He said finance minister Jim Flaherty’s budget will be a reflection of agriculture minister Gerry Ritz’s clout at the cabinet table.
“It is my view that he is a weak minister and I guess a test will be how well he can defend what must be defended.”
Liberal critic Frank Valeriote said his biggest worry is that research spending will be cut.
Canadian governments are already lagging other developed nations in the amount of public money invested in research, innovation and commercialization.
“We are significantly under-spending and my concern is that less will be invested in research and more will be reliant on private sector investment, which is by nature short term.”
Agriculture committee chair Larry Miller said cuts are coming but from his involvement in a caucus committee looking at potential savings, he expects cuts of low-priority programs and not core functions.
“I don’t see anything detrimental to agriculture, but with a department that size, there surely is fat to be trimmed,” said the Conservative MP.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett said farm leaders complained the sector had been disproportionately hurt when a Liberal government tabled the last major deficit-cutting budget in 1995.
“I’m hopeful that while agriculture will receive some cuts, it won’t be disproportionate this time,” he said.
“Compared to 1995, I think there is a better understanding of the important role agriculture plays in the economy and in health policy.”
Bob Seguin, executive director of the George Morris Centre in Guelph, Ont., lived through the federal and provincial budget cuts of the mid-1990s as a senior Ontario provincial bureaucrat and has no doubt the savings can be found without cutting too deeply into necessary programs.
He said it will be a matter of choices for the Conservatives.
“It is doable,” he said. “It would be surprising to see major programs gutted, but do the Conservatives use this to have a serious conversation about what services don’t have to be delivered or what programs or staff positions are not necessary because of information technology or other advances?”
