CALGARY – Farm leaders are dismissive of agriculture ministers’ claims last week that the controversial Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program is being fixed.
After a meeting of federal and provincial agriculture ministers in Calgary Nov. 14, there was a promise from ministers that bureaucrats have been instructed to continuing working on a better CAIS design, including fleshing out details of a stand-alone disaster program.
That was thin gruel for farmers waiting for decisive action on safety nets.
“I definitely wish they were making more progress and I wish they were really taking what farmers are saying into account and not just listening and then doing what they want to do,” said Paradise Valley, Alta., farmer Bill Dobson, president of Wild Rose Agricultural Producers.
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British Columbia grain producer Jim Smolik, president of Grain Growers of Canada, said Nov. 16 that the politicians continue to try to fix a chronic industry problem with a flawed model.
“Our biggest concern is that they are still tinkering with a margins-based program that applies to an industry with declining margins because of foreign subsidies and protectionism,” he said. “We are not seeing any real solution to our base issue in this federal-provincial work. At this point, I don’t have a clear vision of how they will try to deal with our underlying problem, declining margins.”
Manitoba farmer and Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen agreed in a Nov. 17 statement issued in Ottawa that ministers seem to be making little progress on crafting fundamental reforms to a flawed program.
“The WTO is deadlocked,” said Friesen. “The U.S. and EU can continue their huge trade-distorting subsidies. Canadian farmers are in the three worst years of farm income in Canadian history, yet we stand here today with no further details in adequately reforming a program that cannot compete or even be predictable. I don’t know how many times farmers need to say it: A safety net that is not predictable or bankable is not a safety net at all.”
Canada’s agriculture ministers had a more positive spin on the situation.
Vast improvements have been built into what is becoming a new margin-based income stabilization program,? they said in a communiqué Nov. 14 after a one-day meeting in Calgary. ?Ministers, with industry representatives and government officials, have worked intensely on re-engineering the support governments provide to help producers manage the business risks of farming.?
