The annual review of the controversial new farm safety net program is threatening to descend into the chaos and government-farmer divide that marred the launch of the agricultural policy framework last year.
Farm leaders are accusing federal and provincial bureaucrats of trying to create a process that keeps farmers at arms length and makes the review so bureaucratic and slow moving that significant changes will not be possible soon.
An added pressure is that sometime in mid-July, a new agriculture minister will be appointed to try to give direction to the growing morass.
Read Also
Manitoba beekeepers battle for survival
Honeybee colony losses have hit 43 per cent, making 2025 the latest in a string of poor bee survival years for Manitoba’s honey producers
Farm lobby leaders say agriculture minister Bob Speller’s defeat in the June 28 election is a setback because he had made commitments to farmers that they would play a key role in the review and that changes would be made quickly to the design of the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program if farmer criticisms of the program are shown to be true.
“Minister Speller was on our side on this one,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said in a July 2 interview. “It will be important that the new minister understand the issue, understand the importance of farmer involvement and makes sure that happens.”
Grain Growers of Canada executive director Cam Dahl said launch of the long-promised review of the APF is months away and could be a complicated, committee-heavy process.
The federal government, provincial governments and farm groups all want a prominent say over what is studied and how the results are interpreted.
The change of federal ministers in the middle of the organizing means the process has been set back.
“Clearly it needs some leadership from Ottawa and a new minister will need some time to get comfortable with the file,” said Dahl.
“There are crucial questions of who is involved, how many committees there are, who reports to whom and what is being studied. I think we are not close to a start and they are not creating a simple process.”
The farm lobby is concerned that officials from both federal and provincial levels are proposing that the review committee be their creation with farm groups able to offer advice but not to be integral to the review.
There also has been a suggestion in early proposals that the review committee begin “broad-based consultations” on the APF, ranging from the business risk management side to environment, food safety, renewal and research.
“It is appalling and ridiculous that they are talking about broad-based consultations,” said Friesen. “It’s like they are opening up the whole APF process again. Farmers were very frustrated then and it looks like the departments want to go down that road again.”
The CFA president said there should be a technical committee reviewing the details, and farm groups should be able to nominate economists to be part of it.
Beyond that, the national farmer safety nets advisory committee and major national farm groups should meet with agriculture ministers annually to discuss what should be reviewed and the implications of earlier findings.
“We are not proposing to usurp the role of ministers or departments but we insist farmers have a key role in this,” said Friesen.
He accused federal bureaucrats of being afraid of losing control of the process and provincial bureaucrats of being afraid that the review will find flaws that lead to changes that will increase their costs.
“The new minister must insist that farmers be fully involved or we will relive the entire fiasco of the past three years when the APF was designed and implemented despite farmer objections,” said Friesen.
“The government agreed to the review because of the divide with farmers. Now we see officials trying to continue that divide. It is important that the new minister step in quickly to get this process back on track.”
