OTTAWA — Agriculture was absent from the list of Liberal government priorities in last week’s Speech from the Throne.
The six-page list of promises about health care, help for the fishery, job creation, parliamentary reform and trade promotion, had not one word about the problems facing agriculture.
“It is unfortunate that agriculture is not mentioned, that they did not take the chance to show the industry some goodwill,” said Opposition Bloc QuŽbecois agriculture spokesmen Jean-Paul Marchand. “It is as if agriculture does not matter.”
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Reform Party agriculture committee spokesman Allan Kirpan (Moose Jaw-Lake Centre) joined the criticism.
“Given the current state of agriculture, it would have been prudent to at least mention it,” he said in an interview after the Jan. 18 speech read by Gov. Gen. Ray Hnatyshyn. “There are lots of things up in the air and it would have been nice to hear a government commitment.”
From supply management reform to potential budget cuts and continued income problems in some sectors, the opposition MPs said there are many issues that deserved a nod of recognition from the government in its first agenda.
But agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said nothing should be read into the absence of agriculture from the list of pledges. He said the speech was deliberately short and not all issues could be included.
Since the Liberals took office, the government has been active on a number of farm policy fronts, including trade issues and promotion of supply management reform, he said.
“There will be plenty of agricultural content in the days and the weeks ahead,” Goodale said in an interview. “I can assure you it won’t be neglected.”
In contrast, Marchand said 15 years ago while working for then-Liberal agriculture minister Eugene Whelan he concluded that the Liberals cared little for agriculture, no matter how dedicated the minister.
In the speech, the government pledged to reform MP pensions, create a youth core, resurrect a home repair assistance program, spend $2 billion on a federal-provincial-municipal infrastructure program, improve social programs and health care, replace the goods and services tax and produce new law-and-order rules to try to curb violence.
The government said the first Liberal budget in a decade will be presented in February “and will include measures to bring the federal debt and deficit under control in a manner that is compatible with putting Canadians back to work.”
