As early as mid-November, farmers should catch a glimpse of the new array of farm safety net programs planned as a replacement for CAIS, says agriculture minister Chuck Strahl.
Even as critics last week charged that the Conservatives are reneging on a promise to get rid of the unpopular Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program, Strahl was insisting the promise is being fulfilled.
Federal and provincial ministers plan to meet in Whitehorse in mid-November to assess and perhaps make decisions based on negotiations that have been going on since late June when ministers agreed in principle to some CAIS changes.
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Strahl said Aug. 31 that he expects agreement on policy changes that will fundamentally alter CAIS, create a disaster program divorced from the margin-based stabilization system and produce the outline of a new production insurance program that will include both crops and livestock.
“I know what officials have been working on and I believe they are making good progress,” he said. “I hope there will be some detail and signatures coming out of Whitehorse.”
Strahl said there should be enough detail by then that “farmers will be able to see how their farm fits into the new policy direction.”
The minister spoke during a week in which his office felt compelled to issue a statement proclaiming its commitment to “replace CAIS” as the Conservatives had promised during the January election campaign.
Strahl also issued a commentary that called the CAIS program “the ugly duckling of farm programs. Nobody wanted it and nobody loved it. We are absolutely committed to replacing CAIS with separate catastrophic disaster assistance and income stabilization programs that are responsive, predictable, bankable and transparent for farmers.”
The statement followed a widely published news report from the Canadian Press news service that carried the title: “Unpopular farm program can’t be scrapped as promised: Tories.” It was referring to the fact that the controversial margin-based core of the CAIS program will be retained and improved.
It was enough to stir up the debate about whether the Conservatives are breaking an election promise.
“The fact of the matter is that the government is keeping CAIS and improving it and we were in the process of doing that when we were in government,” Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said Aug. 31. “The government simply is sowing confusion among farmers by trying to claim this is a new program. It is not.”
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said Sept. 1 he has seen no evidence of radical new farm support programs that are not tied to a flawed margin-based stabilization system.
“I have not seen anything that is a stand-alone disaster program.”
He has complained to Agriculture Canada about statements that refer to a “new” margin-based program.
Friesen said that makes it sound like a departure from CAIS, which farm groups have complained merely stabilizes poverty when farmers, mainly in grains and oilseeds, have seen a continual slide in margins because of declining commodity prices.
“I have told the department it should not try to dupe farmers by telling them they are creating a new margin-based program,” he said from Winnipeg. “It is still a margin-based program and while the changes they have made are things we have been calling for from the beginning, it still at its core is CAIS and does not deal with the fundamental issue of declining margins.”
In Saskatchewan, agriculture minister Mark Wartman suggested the federal insistence it will replace CAIS was a political directive from prime minister Stephen Harper that the Conservatives not be seen as breaking a promise.
He said the changes agreed to at the last ministers’ meeting in St. John’s, N.L., were improvements that keep the principles of CAIS intact as provinces such as Saskatchewan insist.
“This is the second time that minister Strahl has come out and I think honestly spoken about what’s happening with the CAIS program and then I expect in contact with the prime minister’s office, he’s had to retract it,” Wartman told reporters in Regina.
Significant changes are planned for CAIS including a different inventory valuation system that will send $900 million to farmers this autumn and winter for 2003-05 CAIS years, deeper coverage of negative margins and more timely payments, “but there is no indication that there’s a new program.”
Strahl said it is an argument in semantics. The provinces have insisted that the principles of CAIS be retained but the details are being overhauled, a new disaster program is in the works and an expanded production insurance plan is being developed.
“I call it a new program,” he said. “We will have moved far from what was there before. I think farmers have to be convinced that what we are creating works better for them. That’s what is important.”
