For David MacKay, president of the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers, last week’s appearance before the House of Commons finance committee must have seemed like a case of déj vu.
Repeatedly in past years, the Winnipeg- based executive for the Canadian network of input suppliers has pleaded with MPs and finance department officials to realize that poorly protected fertilizer and farm chemical supplies in stores and warehouses are a public safety threat.
Nitrogen fertilizer can be used to build low-tech bombs. Remember Oklahoma City, the crumbling Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and 168 lives lost in April 1995.
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Yet the CAAR plea for a relatively small investment to help agri-retailers better secure their supplies has fallen on deaf federal ears. The typical federal response is that since security rules are not mandatory regulations, Ottawa has no obligation to co-fund industry compliance.
MacKay’s counter-argument is that if Ottawa spent a little now, it could avoid a significant catastrophe later.
But as he made his Oct. 19 argument to finance committee MPs listening to Canadian wish lists for the 2011 budget, MacKay had to feel frustrated. As he noted to MPs, both Commons and Senate agriculture committees have endorsed his argument for aid and yet governments have not responded.
But then the entire pre-budget finance committee “consultation” with Canadians about what Ottawa should do is a charade. MacKay’s plea is just a glaring example of its depth.
For weeks, the finance committee has been holding hearings across the country, inviting Canadians to tell politicians what they would like to see in a budget.
The hearings are long and for MPs, grueling. Scores of witnesses troop before them every week with their grab bags of demands.
On Oct. 25, for example, 14 groups had their five or 10 minutes of exposure when the finance committee met for three hours in Ottawa. They included Grain Growers of Canada, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association and the Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada.
In many ways, this is political fraud. Canadian lobby and interest groups spend time and energy preparing for their presentations, assuming this gives them a direct voice into the budget-making process. Their members are pleased.
In reality, it is a way to make Canadians feel they are being listened to while they are not. It is political steam-releasing rather than genuine consultation.
It is no criticism of MPs on the committee to note that they cannot possibly do justice to the hundreds of pleas for this spending program, those tax breaks, these policy changes that pour in . And it is no criticism of finance department officials that a long list is at best cherry picked and at worst ignored.
The best MacKay can hope for is that as the budget is written, someone in finance minister Jim Flaherty’s office notices there is little for agriculture and remembers a plea for security funding from agri-retailers.
“And sir, this could fit into our law-and- order agenda.”
“All right then, let’s throw them a bit of money. What’s another $20 million?”
