NEW HAMBURG, Ont. – The federal election campaign was just days old when Liberal MP Lynn Myers found himself huddled in a farmhouse late last week with 20 area farmers, listening to their fears about losing supply management.
“They clearly are nervous and I understand that,” Myers said in a later interview. “I reassured them that there is strong support for supply management from myself and my party but farmers are a skeptical lot, keeping one eye out front and another eye out back.”
It is an issue being felt throughout rural Ontario as some farmers press campaigning politicians for a promise that Canada will not bargain away supply management protections during world trade talks.
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In Myers’ Kitchener-Wilmot-Wellesley-Woolwich riding, supply management is one of the largest farm sectors, which explains his role as chair of the Liberal dairy caucus.
More than an hour south in Haldimand-Norfolk riding, the politicians are getting the same message.
“The supply management side is very nervous about the outcome of the WTO talks,” Conservative MP Diane Finley said Dec. 4. “Obviously, we have to stand up for supply management, just as we have to increase market access and reduce other countries’ subsidies for our exporters.”
Politicians from all parties are able to point to a late-November unanimous House of Commons vote that affirmed a World Trade Organization deal must not reduce supply management’s protective tariffs or increase guaranteed minimum access requirements for foreign products in supply-managed industries.
But, as Myers said, farmers are a skeptical lot and with warnings from their Ontario leaders that WTO talks are not going well for their sector, the promises of politicians are not taken as gospel.
New Hamburg real estate agent Kevin Williams organized the meeting between local farmers and Myers, who lives in the family’s traditional farmhouse near this community west of Kitchener, Ont.
Williams said he has been involved in finding farm properties for a number of Europeans with dreams of becoming Canadian farmers.
“It was before the election was called and a couple of them called me to wonder if they are in danger of losing the value of the quota that they just have spent millions of dollars on,” he said Dec. 3.
“I decided to try to get them together with the politicians and the first meeting I could arrange was with Lynn, who lives a mile from my farm. I planned for about 10 but by the time it happened, about 20 had called to see if they could come. It was a crowd.”
He said the unified message given to Myers that day was: “The system works resoundingly well. Don’t bargain it away.”
He said the farmers in the room from poultry, egg and dairy sectors, many of them immigrant farmers, had a personal stake in the questions they were putting to the MP.
“I know the quota holdings of most of those guys and I would say there was at least $40 million worth of quota sitting in that room, $20 million in dairy alone,” said Williams. “This was not a theoretical policy conversation.”
Supply management leaders are vowing that before the campaign is over Jan. 23, all candidates running in the 40 or so rural Ontario seats where agriculture is a factor will have to face the same questions and the same demand for support.
