Mission accomplished.
Canadian Alliance agriculture critic Howard Hilstrom traveled to Toronto last week to convince Ontario’s crucial farm vote that the CA is an option for them.
Afterwards, an Ontario farm leader said Hilstrom had succeeded in convincing some to give the Alliance a second look.
“I think it is fair to say some people were surprised by what they heard,” said Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Jack Wilkinson. “We will now be looking at the Alliance policy carefully and questioning candidates to see if their policy positions are the same.”
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Ontario farmers will watch to see if the CA message in the more export-oriented West is the same as it is in Ontario.
Election strategists say the CA will run competitive campaigns in at least a dozen rural Ontario ridings now held by Liberals.
The crucial issue at the OFA meeting was supply management, a policy of protection and regulated pricing in dairy and poultry sectors that many Ontario farm leaders figured would be opposed by the western-based Alliance.
Instead, Hilstrom went to an OFA board meeting and surprised them with his strong defence of the system.
“He was very supportive of maintaining the existing supply management system, even going further than the Liberals in terms of minimum access proposals,” Wilkinson said in an interview after the Oct. 18 meeting.
“This was a very positive statement coming from a party that many thought were weak on supply management.”
Hilstrom said later his goal had been to convince the OFA that those who say the Alliance is hostile to supply management are wrong.
“I think the supply management issue has been clarified,” said the Manitoba MP.
“There is no way, after that meeting, that they can tell their farmers the Canadian Alliance is against supply management. All farmers, including supply management, have a friend in the Alliance.”
However, Hilstrom would not agree with the OFA demand that Canada pay farm supports on a parity level with the Americans.
He said existing supports are inadequate but would not endorse the parity request.
“I said an Alliance government would work with farmers to design programs that work,” said the MP. However, he agreed to take the Ontario position back to CA leader Stockwell Day and the caucus.
Still, the most crucial issue for farm leaders from vote-rich rural Ontario was the CA stand on supply management.
The Reform party had been perceived as hostile, in favor of getting rid of all protection in favor of more liberalized trade.
Hilstrom told the OFA leaders that farmers should be able to enjoy the benefits of supply management as long as other countries also protect those sectors.
“Supply management has been a very successful policy that plays by the rules,” he said.
However, he also repeated the CA view that by signing the 1994 world trade agreement, which converted supply management border controls to tariffs, the Liberals signed a death warrant for the system.
Tariff and protection will fall in future trade negotiations.
