REGINA – Liberal candidate Gary Anderson has reason to cozy up to rural voters in his largely urban Saskatchewan riding.
The well-known area farmer figures they cost him the election last year when he came within 123 votes of winning the Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre riding, even though the riding is 70 percent urban.
“We won the city but lost the country and the further you got from the city limits, the fewer votes we got,” Anderson said in an interview. “This time, I am targeting the rural areas much more while trying to make sure I keep the city base.”
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
But the problem Anderson and other rural prairie Liberal candidates have is that many farmers and their leaders have not judged government agriculture policies to be effective or sufficient.
It means that they spend part of their time on the defensive and part of their time promoting agricultural policies that go far beyond – and sometimes are in conflict with – official Liberal policy.
“The farmers are frustrated and they are looking for us to show them some light at the end of the tunnel,” said Anderson.
The official Liberal promises include expansion of the capital gains exemption on farm sales to $750,000, expansion of the advance payments program to livestock and stored crops, implementation of proposals in the Wayne Easter report on “farmer empowerment” and fixing the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization plan in 2006.
Liberal candidates also promote the fact that government support and program payments are now at record levels of more than $5 billion annually.
Anderson said he makes those points but realizes that farmers want to hear more. He tells them more, ideas that are not official policy, and promises that if elected, he will fight in Ottawa and within the Liberal party to change the policy.
“I’m not so sure the CAIS can be fixed,” he said. “What I would like to see is a program that sets a base price that takes costs into account as well as historic yields. That is the simplest way to support farmers and with that price and yield information, they can go to their bankers with some reasonable idea of what their income will be.”
He said it would be similar to United States farm bill payment guarantees.
“I think it would be a challenge to sell this to the government and the bureaucracy but it is a fight we have to fight for farmers,” said the candidate. “There has to be more stable and predictable support if we are going to move ahead into other directions we need to go like investing in biodiesel and value-added.”
In the strongly Conservative southwest Saskatchewan riding of Cypress Hills-Grasslands, farmer and second time Liberal candidate Bill Caton is in much the same position, promoting Liberal efforts to help while promising to fight for much more aggressive policies than the party is offering.
Caton, who ranches near Maple Creek, is promoting a $10-per-bushel government guarantee on the first 10,000 bushels sold of wheat, barley and oats each year.
He believes government has to do more than encourage construction of farmer owned or controlled packing plants, ethanol plants or other value added operations. Government should invest directly.
“I think Paul Martin represents a new deal for agriculture if he could be given a chance but really, I’m running to give myself a chance to argue within the party that we need to do better, to change what we offer,” said Caton. “Small farmers are going broke and government isn’t offering a solution. Free trade isn’t working even for a guy like me that produces a product, cattle, that is exported. What’s wrong with that?”
In the Macleod riding south of Calgary, Liberal candidate Bernie Kennedy says rural voters tune out when any argument is made that the federal Liberal government has tried to help.
Cypress Hills-Grasslands Conservative MP and incumbent David Anderson made the same point a different way. “All you need to do is ask a farmer, ‘so what do you think of CAIS?’ and let them talk.”
