A proposal from the Agricultural Institute of Canada that retail food sales be taxed to raise money for farmers has received a cool reception on Parliament Hill and from some farm groups.
Agriculture minister Andy Mitchell, while refusing to comment directly on the proposal, said his emphasis is on creating conditions that allow farmers to make money from the market.
His parliamentary secretary, Wayne Easter, was less circumspect.
“My take is that it is a non-starter,” he said Nov. 2.
“It’s not what farmers want. But the fact that it has been raised is good because it focuses attention on the problem of income at the farmgate.”
Read Also
VIDEO: Prairie crops on track for average yields
LANGHAM, SASK. – Western Canadian farmers will harvest an average crop this year provided cooler temperatures prevail and the region…
Saskatchewan Conservative MP Gerry Ritz said the idea is filled with questions about how to collect and distribute the money and whether politicians would venture down that road.
“We are in an election cycle and there is no way anyone will talk about tax increases,” he said. “Our view is that tax cuts on inputs would be a far better way to help farm income than some bureaucratic scheme to tax consumers and distribute the money.”
The idea is a key component of a proposal presented this week to the AIC annual meeting in Quebec City. The assumption is that low farm incomes are making agriculture less sustainable and a tax on food could produce several billion dollars of help.
If the Goods and Services Tax was used as the method, then existing rules could provide rebates to poor consumers.
Although farm groups successfully argued against application of the GST when it was introduced in 1991, the paper prepared for the AIC by former Quebec farm lobby activist and journalist Hugh Maynard says it is time to reconsider that opposition.
Farm lobby opinion was split on the issue.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said there are many questions about how the money would be distributed and how much would go to farmers.
And farmers would prefer to make their living from the market than from a new tax.
“But if some way is not found for farmers to accrue more of their income from the market and some of the detail can be worked out and explained, I don’t think we can dismiss this idea out of hand,” Friesen said Nov. 4. “Something has to be done to support farm incomes.”
The National Farmers Union, in contrast, saw the food tax proposal as a farm income solution that misses the mark.
“The problem isn’t that consumers and taxpayers aren’t paying enough,” Swift Current, Sask., farmer and NFU president Stewart Wells said. “The problem is that agribusiness corporations are taking too much, leaving farmers with too little.”
Rural Ontario Conservative MP Larry Miller opposes the idea of higher taxes and had not talked about it with his constituents northwest of Toronto.
“But I honestly don’t believe a few extra cents on a food purchase would be a big deal for them if they knew it was going to farmers,” he said.
