OTTAWA – Western provincial agriculture ministers came to town last week, offering the federal government little manoeuvring room on Crow Benefit reform.
Alberta and Saskatchewan ministers told federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale they remain committed to an earlier position that Ottawa should restore for a decade money it has cut from the subsidy.
Then, the program could be ended.
“Until someone shows us what’s wrong with that, it is our position,” Alberta minister Walter Paszkowski said in an interview from Edmonton Nov. 16, the day after he and ministers from the three other western provinces met Goodale for more than four hours.
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Saskatchewan minister Darrel Cunningham said in a separate interview he supports the Alberta position.
“Our major concern is to keep the dollar amount,” he said. “If this is the alternative to continued cuts or the producer panel idea, it is a better one.”
Goodale, who called western ministers to Ottawa to begin his final consultation on what to do about the Crow Benefit, did not indicate his preferred option to them.
Less, not more money
But he has already said the chances of the government putting more than the current $560 million into the subsidy are slim.
Instead, the amount of money is likely to fall.
The federal minister also heard from Paszkowski that the Alberta government will continue to press Ottawa to combine a change in the method-of-payment with a more radical deregulation of the grain transportation system.
However, he conceded that will not be part of the Western Grain Transportation Act change on the subsidy program that Ottawa has promised for next winter.
“We need a streamlining of the system, the branch line system, the cost system,” said the Alberta minister.
Meanwhile, Goodale finally made it clear in the House of Commons that the Crow Benefit method-of-payment will be changed.
He was accused by a Saskatchewan New Democrat of betraying prairie farmers with the decision.
“Obviously for Western Canada, it is to the advantage of western farmers to change the WGTA rather than suffering the tough disciplines under the new World Trade Organization,” Goodale told the Commons Nov. 18.
New Democrat Len Taylor said the government is ignoring farm interests and is making a decision that will cost farmers in Saskatchewan hundreds of millions of dollars.
