When the latest federal-provincial farm policy was unveiled four years ago, it was sold as a plan to move the industry “beyond crisis management.”
Many farm leaders embraced that vision. But “beyond crisis management” for whom Ñ farmers or governments?
Now, with the agricultural policy framework limping into effect in the face of much criticism, federal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell says the promise is being fulfilled.
But it is moving governments, rather than farmers, beyond crisis management.
“The idea is to get a program that can be an income stabilization program so that you’re not constantly, as a situation comes up, having to design a new program to deal with results every time,” Mitchell said.
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“That was the vision Lyle (Vanclief, former agriculture minister) was dealing with in Whitehorse (where the APF was created) and we will continue to deal with that.”
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said farmers have not felt the improvement.
“Since then there have been many crises and it is far from true to say that what is in place has moved producers beyond crisis,” he said. “There is a review of the program but I don’t think anyone would say farmers are beyond crisis management.”
Wayne Easter, Mitchell’s parliamentary secretary and the politician in charge of investigating causes and solutions to declining farm incomes, said farmers have not, since 2000, moved beyond crisis management.
In fact, they have been hit with crisis after crisis, from BSE and low commodity prices to weather disasters.
“But I think in a sense there has been movement beyond crisis management just in knowing there is a program there with more than a billion dollars in it each year and there may be debates about how that money is spent but at least it is there,” Easter said.
“It is not like the government has to scramble each time there is a crisis to find money. In that sense, we have moved beyond crisis management.”
Yet at the time of the original announcement, there was an assumption that the $5.1 billion, five-year federal commitment to the APF would signal the end of ad hoc special payments that symbolize government crisis management.
Mitchell said the need for ad hoc payments beyond the APF has not been eliminated.
“We have moved to more stable funding but that doesn’t mean there won’t be special circumstances that have to be dealt with and we will deal with them,” he said. “Farmers may not see the move beyond crisis management but the fact that the government now has a program in law is a start,” Easter added.
“Maybe it can be improved but it is a start and a bit of a stable base.”
