It was as if they had a crystal ball.
Nobody around that table on a blustery winter day more than three years ago, save maybe a few optimistic Liberals, should be surprised by the political fiasco the CAIS program has become.
It was foreseen. Uncannily accurate forecasts about its failures were made.
But this was neither a séance nor some mystic gathering.
It was a Feb. 20, 2003, meeting of the House of Commons agriculture committee, and farm leaders were there to plead with the governing Liberals to slow down and heed their warnings about the flaws in the new farm income stabilization program the government was hell-bent on implementing in less than three months.
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Some of the predictions about the flaws in the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program have come back to haunt the program and the governments that provide it.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen accurately predicted that CAIS, based on historic margins, would fail farmers stuck in stable but low-price sectors facing competition from subsidized low-price foreign commodities. In fact, he told MPs that it was a deliberate design.
“We have been told very articulately by the department that there is nothing in their current proposal that will help mitigate the effects of a long period of low prices,” he said.
Ontario farmer Ken Bee, then president of Grain Growers of Canada, also flagged that as a design flaw.
“Because Canada’s principal safety net programs are based on historical revenues, which in the case of grains and oilseeds producers are falling, Canadian safety net spending would decline at a time when it is needed most, when the negative impact of foreign subsidies on world markets is increasing,” he said.
Bee also warned that the decision to exclude many key farm costs from program calculations, including machinery repairs, would render it less effective for farmers.
“The exclusion of legitimate costs may prevent farmers from triggering the program when needed.”
Some predicted that the end of provincial companion programs would hurt farmers suffering specific regional problems and that the design of the new program would not provide support predictability.
Mainly, the farm leaders pleaded for more time to try to convince the bureaucrats designing the program that there were flaws.
“We should not move forward and endorse wholesale change until we are certain that new programs will be better than the programs we have in place today,” Bee said.
The fact that governments have spent endless hours during the past three years amending CAIS adds credence to the farm leaders’ criticisms that day.
To close the circle, a Conservative government was elected in January with strong farmer support and a promise to scrap CAIS.
Looking back, CFA president Friesen recalls the CAIS design period as a time of frustration for farm organizations.
“We could see the flaws, we could predict the failures, but the mindset in the department at the time was that they knew what was best and we were over-reacting,” he said in an interview.
“I think a lot of the problems could have been avoided if they had been more willing to involve the industry in the design. It’s unfortunate.”
Like most things in the farm policy debate, Friesen’s view of valiant opposition does not go unchallenged.
Critics say the CFA and its affiliates gave the government political cover during that period by being enthusiastic about the principles of the agricultural policy framework even if they criticized some of the design.
Friesen appeared on stage and offered an optimistic view in June 2002 when Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien proclaimed a new era in farm programming and funding.
“We spelled out clearly from the beginning that this program would not work,” said National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells.
“It was never capable of delivering all that CFA affiliates said it could deliver. They gave the program the political credibility it needed.”
Saskatchewan deputy premier Clay Serby, agriculture minister in 2003 and the last reluctant signatory to the federal-provincial deal, said CAIS had many parents.
“It is unfair to hang all this on the feds because we were all there, federal, provincial and farm leaders,” he said.
“Farm leaders today say they knew from the beginning it wouldn’t work but if you review the clips of Mr. (former agriculture minister Lyle) Vanclief in the field announcing the program, Mr. Friesen was behind him saying how this would help.”
