LUNDAR, Man. – The $500 million agri-flexibility fund promised by Conservatives during the election will fix problems inherent in the new farm safety net scheme, says a senior Conservative agricultural MP.
James Bezan, chair of the House of Commons agriculture committee in the last Parliament, said the new Agri-Invest program could have the same flaw for livestock producers that the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program had for the grain sector. 
Because both programs base payouts on deviation from historic profit margins, years of no or little profit in a sector reduce margins and payout possibilities.
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Bezan, a cattle producer running for re-election in the Selkirk-Interlake riding north of Winnipeg, said in an early October interview that the new program introduced by his government to replace CAIS still has gaps.
“There is a real concern, and I share it, that it might not be as effective as livestock producers need because it really would be stabilizing years of small or negative margins,” he said.
“That’s what I see agri-flexibility funding doing, helping to fill that hole.”
Few details are available on how the Conservatives would use money from this commitment to help co-fund regionally or provincially designed programs that meet local support needs.
It is clear the program will require provincial agreement to add 40 percent of the funding before any federal dollars are spent.
That led grain and oilseed farmers in Ontario to assume their cost-based risk management program would be one of the first to receive federal funding because the Ontario government is already spending its 40 percent.
Last week during the national agriculture debate sponsored by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, agriculture minister Gerry Ritz threw doubt on that presumption.
Without elaboration, he suggested putting money into the Ontario program would take up space in Canada’s ability under World Trade Organization rules to spend money that distorts trade. This “amber box” spending under WTO rules could hurt supply management, he suggested.
“When you consider the RMP (risk management program) situation in Ontario, you realize there is only so much room in the amber basket when we start talking about global details out there,” Ritz said.
“The more money you put into amber basket programming, the less room there is to maintain our supply managed sector.”
Under WTO rules, exports of supply-managed products are considered trade distorting and count toward Canada’s allowed cap on export subsidies. Ritz was suggesting support for the Ontario program would fit into the same category.
Because the minister did not stay after the debate to answer questions, his comments left farmers unclear about how the announced agri-flexibility money would be spent and whether Ontario’s program would qualify.
Ritz also suggested that a $50 million fund for the packing industry announced by the Conservatives could be used to help provincially regulated plants upgrade to federal status that would allow their products to be sold across borders.
Details of how the money would be spent have not been provided, but the minister suggested it would help keep regional packing plants viable to reduce the distance between producers and the nearest plant.
“There is no slaughter capacity at the federal level in Manitoba,” Ritz said. “We will be there for this programming.”
