OTTAWA – Ontario’s farm lobby soon will find out what clout it has with the new Conservative Ontario government.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture, fearing that the Mike Harris government will slash agriculture spending this autumn, has launched a “relentless” lobby campaign to preserve services it has.
And the Ontario Agricultural Commodity Council, an umbrella group of provincial farm organizations, issued a warning last week that premier Harris will be breaking his promise to rural Ontario if he cuts agriculture spending.
Gary Ireland of Simcoe, Ont., chair of the OACC, said in an Aug. 31 statement that the new Tory government has started to suggest that agriculture, like all other departments, faces sharp budget cuts this autumn.
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He said this is the opposite of what Harris promised during the summer election campaign when he praised agriculture for already taking its hit from the budget cutters in Toronto.
“Will Mike Harris honor his pre-election commitments to agriculture and rural Ontario?” asked Ireland. “Or is he simply another politician who promises one thing before being elected and does the opposite after being elected?”
A crucial area is to preserve research funding from government, said OFA president Roger George. An annual research grant of more than $30 million to the University of Guelph is key to the future of the sector, he said.
“If he touches that, I can assure you there will be political hell to pay,” said George. “For farmers, research spending is the best safety net you can have.”
He said the OFA message is that past cuts have pared the agriculture budget to the core.
“It is our job to tell the government that this is an industry on the move, with investment happening and a positive mood,” said the OFA president. “Any signal that the government is insensitive to that, that it wants to reduce the support and the infrastructure, could send that entrepreneurship underground again.”
George said it took farmers a couple of years to educate the last provincial government about the importance of agriculture to the economy.
The Ontario agriculture budget is more than $400 million annually.
Noble Villeneuve, the new agriculture minister, promised farmers safety net spending will not be cut.
It leaves research, a $159 million property tax rebate and regional agriculture department offices as the likely victims of any cutting.
George is worried that if federal-provincial negotiations over a new safety net system break down this month, “all bets could be off” on the provincial promise of no safety net spending cuts.
