Opposition MPs say they will demand that the Conservative government commit to higher farm supports in light of the stall in World Trade Organization negotiations.
“I believe in light of the WTO collapse, we have to turn our agriculture policy on its head,” Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said Aug. 31.
“With no WTO deal in sight, this is a completely different world. We have to be prepared to match the United States dollar for dollar in support of farmers or our farmers are not going to survive.”
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NDP critic Alex Atamanenko said his party also will be calling for the Conservatives to recognize that a WTO deal cutting subsidies in other countries is no longer an answer to farmer pleas for help.
“We really need a comprehensive plan to recognize that there will be no deal, at least in the short term, and that means the government has to become more aggressive in supporting our farmers in the face of the support their competitors get from their governments,” he said Sept. 1.
It is a message Canadian farm leaders also have been issuing since WTO negotiations were put on hold in late July by director general Pascal Lamy. A stalemate between the U.S. and the European Union over their respective proposals for domestic subsidy cuts and import barrier reductions remains the main sticking point, as it has been through most of the five years since the Doha round was launched.
Easter said Canadian government attitudes must adjust to the new WTO reality.
But he also conceded that during a Liberal caucus meeting in late August, the demands from rural MPs for pressure on the government attracted some caution from party leaders and urban MPs.
“There is concern about cost and how much money we are talking about,” said Easter, a P.E.I. farmer and 13-year MP. “I understand that. We have to cost it out. But we also have to put pressure on the government and we will.”
Easter said even the Liberal leadership candidate he supports, Michael Ignatieff, has been reluctant to endorse the strategy until potential costs are estimated.
However, Ignatieff, a Toronto MP, said last week a central core of his campaign to become Liberal leader is recognizing the growing disparity between urban and rural Canada.
According to a posting on his website, Ignatieff promised “a national food policy that gets consumers, producers and processors together to save agricultural Canada.”
He did not elaborate and calls to his campaign office for clarification were not returned by deadline.
He said many parts of rural Canada are questioning their future with “substandard health services, substandard roads, no access to broadband. In small towns, people voice a frustration, the sense that they’ve lost their kids, that taxes are growing. That’s a cry about citizenship. It says ‘we want to be equal citizens and we’re not.’ “
