SASKATOON – Ottawa should return the Crow Benefit to its level of two years ago and pay all of it directly to western grain farmers, says United Grain Growers president Ted Allen.
“The Crow Benefit is western money,” he told agriculture minister Ralph Goodale last week. “Every cent belongs to western farmers.”
The only possible exception would be to set aside a small part of the money, perhaps five percent, to reimburse local governments for increased road maintenance and repair costs due to rail and elevator abandonment.
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In a Nov. 22 letter to the agriculture minister, Allen also said the Crow money should not be rolled into any new farm safety net program.
And the UGG president said whatever new system is devised, it should be driven by a legislated formula, free from any interference by politicians or bureaucrats.
Industry asked for input
Goodale has asked farm and grain industry organizations for their advice on how to pay the Crow Benefit to farmers. The money is now paid to the railways, but Goodale says that must change because of new world trading rules.
The minister has also told farm groups the benefit will be reduced from its current level of $560 million for budgetary reasons. That doesn’t sit well with Allen, who said in his letter it should be returned to its 1992 level of $658 million.
But the point he emphasized most strongly in his letter to Goodale is that all of the Crow money must remain in Western Canada. If any Crow money heads east, he said, it will trigger a potentially nasty political reaction in Western Canada.
“If one penny of the Crow Benefit is used to buy off these so-called ‘concerns’ of farmers elsewhere, then rest assured that western interests will begin to demand ‘the West’s share’ of supply-managed benefits and any other agricultural program whose benefit has been concentrated elsewhere, whether they be in the form of consumer or taxpayer subsidies.”
Other points made by Allen in his reply to Goodale include:
- The payment should be made on the basis of cultivated acres, must not distort production or marketing decisions and should be in the form of a bankable financial instrument. UGG prefers a lump-sum payment.
- How to deal with the effect of pooling changes on farmers in different regions of the prairies should be negotiated by provincial governments. Failing that, Ottawa should impose a solution.
- Ideally the money will be distributed in the same way across the prairies. However provincial variations may be unavoidable.
- Any change to method of payment must be accompanied by broad deregulation of the transportation system, including a market-based freight rate, direct shipper-carrier negotiations for rail cars and faster branch line rationalization.
