The Liberals last week unveiled an election platform which offers rural Canada and farmers more of the same.
There were no major new announcements for rural Canada, no new spending programs and no surprises.
“There’s already a vigorous program up and running,” agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said April 30 in Saskatoon when the Liberal platform was officially announced. “The platform will build on that program.”
It is a program that includes 1997 budget promises of $50 million more in capital funding for the Farm Credit Corporation, more money for rural internet access, efforts to promote rural tourism and support for diversification and value-added production.
Read Also
Canola oil transloading facility opens
DP World just opened its new canola oil transload facility at the Port of Vancouver. It can ship one million tonnes of the commodity per year.
Rural policy initiative
There was a recognition that agriculture is a foundation industry for many rural communities, and he offered an ill-defined “rural policy initiative to facilitate research and analysis on rural issues.”
There was announcement of a new trade promotion agency to co-ordinate government and private trade efforts and to be “a marketing agency to help sell Canadian goods and services around the world.”
However, the Liberals are not promising one institutional change demanded by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and supported by the Liberal-dominated natural resources committee of the last Parliament – a minister for rural affairs
in cabinet.
“There is no such plan at this time,” prime minister Jean ChrŽtien curtly told the news conference.
But natural resources minister Anne McLellan quickly jumped in to mock a Progressive Conservative promise to create a “sustainable development” portfolio that would include agriculture, natural resources, fisheries and environment.
The proposal shows “an insensitivity on the part of the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform party to the fact that rural Canada is a very important component of this country,” she said.
In fact, the Reform party has not proposed such an amalgamation of agriculture with environment.
The overall Liberal party platform calls for a cautious balancing between continued deficit cutting, fiscal conservatism and some increased social spending.
Its major announcement, higher-than-projected transfers of health and social spending to the provinces, was made several days before the platform was released.
There also was a promise of support for a pharmacare program of drug cost coverage if the provinces agree.
Fight against poverty
And there could be a doubling of the $850 million available for programs to fight child poverty once the money is available.
The Liberal promises would add up to $6.5 billion over five years.
They also predict the federal books will be balanced within two years and once that happens, surpluses will be divided between reducing the debt and tax cuts on one side and increasing program spending on the other.
Reform party leader Preston Manning, who received a leaked copy of the Liberal platform and released it a day before the Liberals did, saw it differently.
The promise of increased spending was a sign of old Liberalism, Manning told reporters in Ottawa April 30. “When I read this document, six words came to mind: goodbye red book, hello cheque book.”
