The Progressive Conservative chair of the Senate agriculture committee last week criticized prairie grain companies for letting farmers go broke while they make “record profits.”
Saskatchewan senator Len Gustafson said he is coming to the conclusion the Canadian government should be willing to subsidize Canadian farmers as much as European and American farmers are subsidized, since farmers can’t make a living otherwise.
“The grain companies have been making money,” he said April 15 during a Senate agriculture committee meeting. “The grain companies have made record profits while farmers are going bankrupt. None of it has gone back to the farmers as they (companies) have become conglomerates.”
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The federal government leans heavily on producers to “take one for the team” and risk their livelihoods without any reassurance of support.
For his outburst, the southern Saskatchewan farmer and longtime Tory MP got a tongue-lashing from a fellow Saskatchewan Conservative senator. Gustafson also received a polite rebuke from grain company representatives.
Saskatchewan senator Dave Tkatchuk said during the meeting farmers are losing money because of foreign subsidy-induced low commodity prices and not because of greedy companies. He called the prairie grain industry “good corporate citizens.”
When Gustafson continued to insist it was time for government to intervene with large subsidies, Tkatchuk accused him of being influenced by former Liberal agriculture minister Eugene Whelan, vice-chair of the Senate committee and an agri-business critic.
“What the hell has Whelan done to you?” Tkatchuk asked Gustafson. “You’ve become a left winger.”
Grain company executives who appeared before the committee were in the audience when Gustafson made his remarks and were more subtle but just as firm.
“Every grain company is suffering a lot of hurt this year,” said Agricore vice-president Brian Saunderson. “No one is going to show a good bottom line … I wanted to clear up this misconception.”
Neither United Grain Growers policy development manager Blair Rutter nor Saskatchewan Wheat Pool vice-president Marvin Shauf responded when they spoke to the committee.
But later, they said Gustafson was off-base.
Shauf said Saskatchewan Wheat Pool quarterly reports show a year of lower profits.
“There seems to be some kind of a notion that grain companies don’t have to be profitable,” he said.
“But if they aren’t profitable, they cannot provide the service that farmers want.”
