Saskatchewan’s premier may regret emphasizing the fairness theme in a recent speech.
Lorne Calvert told delegates attending the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities’ 2007 annual convention that while Manitoba will receive $1.6 to $1.7 billion in federal equalization payments this year, Saskatchewan’s share will be $13 to $16 million.
“What’s the difference? We have oil and gas. Manitoba has hydro. Hydro is not counted,” said Calvert.
It was part of his plea for the Conservative government to live up to its election promise of fully excluding non-renewable natural resources from the equalization formula.
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“We just want our money. We want our fair share,” said the premier.
Those words came back to haunt Calvert during the bearpit session that followed his address. A series of disgruntled SARM delegates asked Calvert why his government isn’t practising what it preaches.
They are upset by what they see as the unequal treatment of two sets of farmers that suffered crop disasters last year.
Flooded growers in the northeast received a $25 per acre payment from the provincial and federal governments while drought-stricken farmers in the southwest haven’t received a penny.
SARM director Ray Orb amended one of the premier’s statements to drive home his point.
“Farmers just want a fair deal. We want a fair share,” he said.
Larry Grant, a member of SARM’s southwest drought committee, said farmers in that region of the province have been told to wait for the formation of a national disaster assistance program.
“We don’t need a disaster program two years down the road. We need help last year,” he told Calvert’s cabinet.
“Can you give us some indication of when you’re going to start treating people within this province fairly?”
That prompted a terse response from agriculture minister Mark Wartman.
He said he has met with Grant’s committee three times and has “gone out on a limb” by saying that the province would contribute 10 percent toward a national disaster program.
“If you’re going to push us on fairness, be fair and at least acknowledge in front of your peers here the work that we are doing,” he said to a chorus of boos from the delegates.
In an interview after the bearpit session Grant said he will feed his last bale of hay to his cattle on April 20.
“If we don’t get some rain we will be either selling cows or shipping them somewhere else,” he said.
SARM has been lobbying the provincial and federal governments for a $25 per acre payment for arable land and $18 per acre for non-arable land since mid-summer, to no avail.
“Governments have not been overly eager to put money into the southwest corner of the province. We don’t have many people that live down there,” said Grant.
Wartman said the province treated the two areas differently because there was no disaster assistance framework in place at the time farmers in the northeast received their payment. There is now.
And he emphasized that the payment to farmers in the northeast did not set a precedent.
“We cannot go on with ad hoc payments and I know that doesn’t help and I know that frustrates people,” he said.
Wartman vowed that the province will continue to push the federal government to set up a national program so everybody will be covered in the future.
In the meantime, some growers in southwestern Saskatchewan will be heading into the fields with unpaid bills from last year, said Grant.
