Conservative leader Stephen Harper continues to court rural Quebec votes with farmer and cooperative-friendly proposals he offered during a tour of the province.
He stepped into the controversial issue of a cattle cull by calling for a federal guaranteed price for cull cattle, a move already taken by the Quebec government for cull sales in the province.
Harper did not say what the floor price should be, according to a statement released by his office, but the Quebec government has said it will spend $7.6 million to guarantee a 42-cents-per-pound price for cull cattle sold to the province’s packing plant in Montreal, recently bought by provincial farmers.
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The provincial promise to pay the difference between the packer price and 42 cents lasts until April.
Harper was not as specific as he called on Ottawa to make the Quebec commitment a national one.
“Producers are currently forced to either keep older cows longer or sell them at drastically lower rates than they could have before the border closure,” he said.
“Farm families are losing money and livelihoods. A per head price for cull cows, paid by the federal government, could help ease this economic burden.”
The issue of a cull of older animals has been a controversial one, opposed by the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association even though Alberta premier Ralph Klein has voiced some support.
CCA president Stan Eby said the older animals in the system before the 1997 feed ban should be cleaned out within a year and a half under normal markets. A special cull would send a panic signal to consumers.
However, Harper tied his proposal to the surplus of older, lower-valued animals that will not be allowed across the border even if it opens this spring to younger Canadian cattle. He did not specifically target pre-1997 animals.
Harper also met Quebec co-op leaders to promise that his party wants federal finance minister Ralph Goodale to include in the next budget tax incentives for those who invest in the co-op movement.
In December, the all-party House of Commons finance committee, including Conservative MPs, supported the proposal that a Co-operative Investment Plan be set up to give investors a tax break for providing co-ops some investment capital.
“The CoopŽrative FŽdŽrŽe’s proposal makes sense,” Harper said, according to an announcement issued Jan. 20 by his office.
“It has the potential to give co-ops and their members a much greater opportunity to strengthen and expand their operations. For instance, some co-ops would like to build abattoirs, a need that is particularly urgent across Canada. This proposal can provide millions of dollars of strategic investment like this in Canada’s regional economies.”
For months, Harper has been courting rural Quebec votes, a bastion of Progressive Conservative support in the 1980s and now largely represented by the Bloc QuŽbecois.
