A steady stream of Saskatchewan government, opposition and agricultural interests have been knocking on Ottawa’s door promoting a federal biofuel promotion strategy to help the province’s beleaguered grain industry.
They all left the capital believing they have a friend in federal agriculture minister Chuck Strahl, who has promised a federal biofuel plan soon.
“Our message to him is we need a champion at the cabinet table,” Lionel Labelle of the Saskatchewan Ethanol Development Council told a Parliament Hill news conference May 11 after a meeting between a Saskatchewan delegation and the federal minister. “We feel he has taken up the cause.”
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Earlier, in a separate meeting, Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall made the same pitch and said he was encouraged by the federal minister’s response.
“Minister Strahl shares my commitment to developing the biofuels industry and to ensuring that producers are more than just suppliers of feedstock but also have ownership in the biofuels industry,” Wall said.
The federal government, through statements by Strahl and a commitment in finance minister Jim Flaherty’s May 2 budget, has promised that a biofuels strategy will be part of the farm sector recovery strategy and also part of the “made-in-Canada” pollution reduction plan it is promoting as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas reduction promises made by the previous Liberal government.
Details of the Conservative plan are expected soon. Agriculture, environment and natural resource ministries all are part of the planning process.
But those watching the issue question whether the federal government will be willing to commit the dollars necessary to make a national ethanol and biofuels industry succeed against subsidized competition.
Saskatchewan deputy premier Clay Serby, who led the provincial delegation, said the primary demand is that Ottawa should issue a mandate that requires gasoline to have at least a 10 percent ethanol content by 2010 – double the current commitment – and ensure that half of the ethanol feedstock comes from Western Canada.
He also said that any Canadian industry must have the same level of government support that the American industry has.
“If you have one country that has subsidies, our appeal to the federal government is that we need the same tools that the Americans have,” Serby said.
Quebec farm leader Laurent Pellerin cautioned that the U.S. industry is profitable only because grain farmers can sell cheap product to the ethanol plants with substantial subsidy cheques from Washington to supplement their income.
