TORONTO – Canadian agricultural policy could undergo the most radical redesign in a generation if the federal Conservatives win a majority government, says a respected analyst of Canadian policy evolution.
University of Toronto political science professor Grace Skogstad argues in a presentation to an international policy conference in Victoria this week that a majority Conservative government would be tempted to implement a “market liberal” model of farm policy.
She said it would involve undermining or ending such “statist” institutions as supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board and reducing the role of government in agricultural markets.
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“I really see this as a very ideological government and in some ways, I think conditions are emerging that could see it applied to agricultural policy,” she said in an interview at her university office.
Those conditions include World Trade Organization talks that, if successful, will require concessions on the role of governments in markets, and high grain prices that would mask the impact of a radical policy shift.
It was the same combination of factors – new world trade rules and temporarily high grain prices – that allowed the Liberals to end the Crow Benefit grain transportation subsidy in 1995-96 without a major political uproar, Skogstad said.
In a paper on Canadian policy evolution she was to deliver Sept. 13 at the University of Victoria, she argued that Canada could be heading in a new policy direction.
“This would be more likely under a majority Conservative government in Ottawa that is ideologically committed to ‘free markets’ and harmonious relations with Canada’s most important trading partner,”
Skogstad wrote.
“If they are not made as part of a trade negotiation, statist instruments could be eliminated to ward off American trade harassment and out of the desire to secure access to that crucial market.”
While such a move to liberal market policies is “fraught with political risk,” she said it could be done “in a period of buoyant commodity prices such as that created by the current interest in biofuels.”
Skogstad said the alternative path for national policy development is for Canada to move to the European model of “multifunctionality,” in which farm support is tied to environmental stewardship, safe food and rural landscape preservation.
Federal-provincial negotiations to design the next five-year farm policy framework could offer an early hint of the direction the Conservatives will take, she said.
