The next generation of farm policies must separate farm income and welfare goals from programs that help viable commercial farmers be competitive, says the head of a research centre trying to create a template for a new Canadian food policy.
“That’s got to be fundamental to any new policy,” said Larry Martin, president of the George Morris Centre in Guelph, Ont.
“We have a policy right now that tries to mix social goals with commercial goals. What’s wrong with CAIS (Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program) is that people expect it to accomplish social goals when it wasn’t set up to do that.”
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Martin is trying to fix that by organizing focus group sessions across the country this summer aimed at developing a policy that will support what he calls the commercial sector. Representatives of all sectors of the industry will be invited.
He said the resulting farm policy proposal will deal with the cost of Canadian regulations, getting rid of policies that hamper Canadian food industry competitiveness and creating policies that attract investment, innovation and research.
The $250,000 project, which is slated to produce a policy blueprint by the end of the year, is financed largely by companies and private sector groups that paid $25,000 to have a stake in the venture.
Martin said policies created under the umbrella of the agricultural policy framework are flawed because they do not differentiate between classes of farmers: the minority whose operations and cash flow are large enough to support a farm family and the majority who require off-farm income or government support to survive.
The George Morris Centre said the APF, which was implemented three years ago after federal-provincial negotiations, “is simply inadequate. The APF appears to be a made-in-government framework that integrated the input of selected agri-food stakeholders. It is geared to the needs of government governance, administration and public relations but only partially addresses the reality of commercial farms and firms that generate jobs, foreign exchange earnings and investment in the sector.”
Martin acknowledged in an interview that the Conservative government has committed to replacing CAIS with a better program but he said that was not the trigger for the centre’s project.
“The motive is that the APF does nothing to address the hidden tax of the regulatory system,” he said. “And it is clear to us that this is the worst fiscal environment in the developed world to attract investment. We need a policy that attracts investment.”
