WINNIPEG – Despite record Liberal government farm support payments since the last election, farmers have increased their overwhelming support for the Conservative party, says pollster Ipsos Reid.
A survey completed Jan. 5 suggests 64 percent of farmers plan to vote Conservative Jan. 23 compared to 20 percent for the Liberals. It is a four percent increase for the Conservatives and a three percent drop for the Liberals across the country and in all farm sectors.
A total of 875 farm households were surveyed, with 3.3 percent potential margin of error.
The Conservatives show a 10 percent increase in electorally crucial rural Ontario to 66 percent. The party has a 70 percent lock on prairie farm voters.
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“There really hasn’t been a favourable farmer reaction to Liberal support announcements,” Ipsos Reid vice-president Curtis Johnson said.
“Farmers feel existing programs are not working for them. There also is a backlash among farmers against the scandals, farmers who are struggling and yet see people with Liberal connections making money from government contracts.”
Compared to 2004, low commodity prices and high farm input prices have replaced BSE as the most important issues in the farm sector.
“BSE has been such a dominant issue since 2003, but this election it has dropped off the radar screen,” said Ipsos Reid senior agri-food research manager Scott Patton.
The poll shows farmer support for Conservatives has dropped in British Columbia, Quebec and in Atlantic Canada with the Liberals picking up support.
“But Ontario is a crucial battleground and there, the Conservatives have made major gains at the expense of the Liberals,” said Johnson.
The poll results came during the week when all three major political parties released their official campaign platforms.
The Conservatives reaffirmed a $500 million addition to annual farm spending, a new farm support program with a separate disaster relief program, support for supply management and an end to the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
The NDP promised a $1 billion emergency payment to grains and oilseeds producers and a regulated fair price if a distorted, corporate-dominated marketplace does not offer high enough returns for farm produce.
Liberal leaders freelanced some campaign promises that went far beyond their printed platform of a revision to the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program with Wayne Easter’s farmer empowerment recommendations as a guiding model.
On Jan. 13, during an all-party agricultural debate in Toronto, agriculture minister Andy Mitchell reversed government policy by promising that the $755 million aid announcement he made in November for grains and oilseeds producers would not be considered income that would reduce eligible payments from the CAIS.
He suggested a re-elected Liberal government would change the rules to make sure future ad hoc farm payments are not CAIS offsets. “As we redesign CAIS, we will eliminate the need for that to happen,” said Mitchell.
He also expanded on an unexpected announcement by prime minister Paul Martin that the Liberals embrace a previously rejected Ontario proposal that grains and oilseeds producers be able to receive quick support based on a price trigger and planted acreage.
Mitchell said the principle is that while the Ontario model might not apply across the country, a re-elected Liberal government would consult all provinces to see what specific programs would work for their producers to supplement the national CAIS payment rules in their region.
“There is a need for flexibility,” said Mitchell. “What I have been hearing from producers across Canada is a desire to see some flexibility in terms of the type of programming that we do with particular issues in different provinces. How one would want to do that and how that would work out would be different in different provinces. In Ontario, it would be a grains and oilseeds proposal.”
The agriculture minister, in a tough fight to retain his Ontario seat, said he is not dismayed by poll results that suggest farmers have not responded politically to multi-billion dollar government support efforts during the past two years.
“The measurement of what I do for Canadian producers is not political support,” said Mitchell. “It is measured by the fact that there are needs out there.”
