Vanessa, Ont., tobacco producer Mark Bannister remembers May 4, 2004, a day his ears perked up when his local MP and then-agriculture minister Bob Speller promised $71 million in aid to the local tobacco industry.
He had been one of the industry lobbyists.
A year later with the money finally beginning to flow, Bannister is disappointed. It is less than was promised and much less than is required for an agricultural sector in crisis.
He is a representative of a tobacco industry group calling for a more generous government response to an income crisis. The troubles have been brought on by anti-smoking campaigns in Canada, usually supported by government, and an increase in imports of cheap tobacco from countries that use chemicals and have labour regulations not allowed in Canada.
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“We need help and a 10-year plan,” Bannister said April 29 on the eve of the year anniversary of the political promise. “Speller threw a Band-Aid at a very large problem and even that was smaller than he promised. He should not expect much support in tobacco country if he decides to run again.”
Speller said last week he is considering an attempt to regain the Ontario House of Commons seat he held for 16 years before losing it last year to Conservative Diane Finley.
The tobacco industry plight will be an election issue in the riding.
On May 2, Finley complained in an interview that Speller’s financial promise was designed to help just half the industry leave.
“That pits farmer against farmer and that is unacceptable.”
She said there is a need for more money, a long-term plan and more research into alternative uses for tobacco’s sandy soil and for the tobacco plant.
“There has to be an eight-year plan to help those out who want out and to make the market viable for those who stay in it,” said the Conservative agriculture critic.
For area tobacco farmers, the last year has been an exercise in watching political election promises ebb away.
It was May 4, 2004, and the Liberal government was weeks away from calling an election.
Rookie minister but veteran Haldimand-Norfolk MP Speller was facing a tough re-election fight and he went to the riding to announce a rescue package that was worth hundreds of millions of dollars to his riding Ñ a package that included money for tobacco quota buyout, retraining for farmers leaving the industry and a promise that the federal government would monitor imports.
“The government is committed to providing transitional assistance to tobacco producers,” he said in a News Release
news issued in Ottawa. “In line with the World Health Organization’s framework convention on tobacco control, the government is working to help adversely affected growers.”
Speller said he was working with Quebec and Ontario governments to create a program.
Then he travelled to his riding and let it be known that the federal commitment was $71 million.
But there were problems with the promise.
One was that the government had not approved the aid package when it was announced.
Another was that Speller lost the election and a tobacco aid package designed in part to help him get re-elected was not a high priority for successor minister Andy Mitchell with nary a tobacco producer in his northern Ontario riding.
“Why don’t you ask Andy where the Speller bailout money is?” a Liberal minister joked to a reporter last autumn as debate swirled around whether the minority Liberals would keep all the expensive promises the majority Liberals made last year to try to retain power. “Up in smoke, I bet.”
Mitchell eventually was persuaded to honour the promise and Ottawa now is offering $67 million, $10 million of it to Quebec, to buy quota.
There are 775 active tobacco farmers with quota, close to half of them in the Haldimand-Norfolk riding south of Toronto, and Bannister said close to half will have to leave the industry. Several hundred are facing foreclosure by lenders.
The federal offer of a “reverse auction” system is 85 cents per pound for quota and even with an Ontario provincial supplement of $35 million, it raises the offering price to $1.33 per lb. of quota.
Bannister said farmers need more than $4 per lb. over 10 years to ease out of the industry. That is close to what American tobacco farmers recently received in a multibillion-dollar buyout.
And he complained that the federal retraining money never materialized and the import monitoring has not been working.
“We are looking for a long-term solution for a legal industry in which farmers have invested millions,” said Bannister. “People will continue to smoke but they will increasingly be using products that are imported from places with far less stringent rules than we have.”
