Nick Parsons was sounding upbeat last week.
After several days of lobbying in Ottawa, the British Columbia farmer and cross-country combine driver was hoping to get some national exposure on CBC television.
After that, he would be pointing his combine, Prairie Belle, west, planning to drive a long winding route across the Prairies from Brandon to his Farmington, B.C., farm.
“I really think this will have a good impact,” he said Jan. 31. “It has to. Government has to do something. It has to see the danger of losing our farmers.”
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Parsons said his trip west will be a chance to lift the morale of farmers he meets.
“I’m going to try to put some spirit into them as I drive out.”
However, behind that public optimism Parsons was talking privately about his disappointment at how little change his two cross-country trips have made.
“Nick is really discouraged,” said The Pas, Man., farmer Larry King, who shared an Ottawa hotel room with Parsons.
“He feels he didn’t really make much of a difference. He feels somewhat defeated this year.”
King was one of several dozen farmers from the Prairies and Ontario who spent last week lobbying politicians and government officials to support farm aid, a long-term cost-of-production support program, and an investigation into concentration and vertical integration in the food industry outside the farm sector.
On Feb. 1, a delegation met with agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief, who promised he is working to find more money for farm support.
Nothing concrete
However, there was no government commitment to cost-of-production support nor to support levels comparable to American levels.
Each evening, the farmers invited parliamentarians to meet them. When Ontario Liberals Murray Calder and Larry McCormick turned up on Jan. 31, they were bombarded by complaints about government inaction.
The farmers told the politicians the $20,000 spring interest-free advance is too little and simply means more debt. Incomes are too low, they said, and production costs are escalating. Existing farm support programs are inadequate.
“There is no credibility,” said Bruce Pearse from Sunderland, Ont.
“Hearing the names of those programs gives me the same shudder as I get when I hear my former wife’s name.”
John Doner, a Gormely, Ont., farmer, told the MPs that he is one of the producers with a larger-than-average Net Income Stabilization Account. Agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief and his officials often complain that Canadian farmers hold several billion dollars in their NISA accounts, even while demands are being made for more farm aid.
Doner, who farms 4,000 acres near Toronto, said he has a NISA account worth $100,000.
“I could draw all that out and it wouldn’t pay my fuel bill.”
Calder, who is expected to be elected chair of the Liberal rural caucus this week, defended government policies, but also admitted he is frustrated by the government’s failure to do more. He made little effort to defend the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program.
“It was a bureaucratic nightmare.”
McCormick, Vanclief’s parliamentary secretary, said the farmers should not assume the government and its MPs are hostile to them.
“There is a lot more support than you think in trying to get more money.”
Lloyd Pletz, a Balcarres, Sask., farmer and an organizer of the lobby in Ottawa, said those in government who support aid should move quickly.
“We get help before spring or we pull the plug.”
