Whatever political landscape confronts Canadians May 3 (deadlines mean this column is being written before the result is known), there will be no obvious roadmap for rural policy.
True, each party produced a rural and agricultural chapter in their policy platforms and all paid at least lip service to calls for a national food strategy and support of local producers and local food markets.
But a common theme during a month travelling through more than 30 rural ridings in five provinces was that there was precious little debate about agriculture and food issues.
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Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
Overwhelmingly, candidates reported that rural voters wanted to talk about broader issues, such as health care, housing and pensions.
However, despite the general lack of debate, several large issues loom for the next government that could have huge implications for farmers and rural Canada.
National agriculture programming is one of the most important.
While negotiations on the next Growing Forward framework for farm programs were disrupted by the election campaign, the details must be worked out to be ready for implementation April 1, 2013. It seems like a long time away but recent history shows that it isn’t. Implementation of the current set of programs had to be delayed by a year after 2008 because details were not ready. It is a complicated negotiation.
Other than the Liberal promise to rewrite federal support programs, there was little discussion of what the next federal government should bring to the negotiating table.
Trade was another largely overlooked issue during the campaign.
The Conservatives promised that an aggressive market-opening effort would be at the core of their agriculture policy, but the New Democratic Party has been largely skeptical of this strategy and in some cases outright hostile.
Sitting in the wings is the potential, however unlikely, of an alignment of the stars that could produce a tentative World Trade Organization deal.
The template for a deal would offer Canadian exporters some potential new market access but also threaten supply management protections and end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
There is broad political agreement that supply management must be protected, but would a new government really kill a potential trade deal worth tens of billions of dollars for the broader economy because of supply management tariffs for dairy, poultry and eggs?
It seems incredible to imagine, but that’s what the politicians say. An electoral insistence that they state a clear bottom line would have been helpful.
Canada-European Union trade talks also face a late 2011 deadline, and while the Conservatives have been gung ho, the NDP and its trade-skeptical allies have been mainly negative. Would legislation to implement a Canada-EU deal fly?
The just-completed campaign that is supposed to lay out signals of future political paths offered little clue.
There are many other issues that received little attention. The one seeming certainty is that there will be more money for food safety and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Beyond that, the future of farm and rural policy seems uncertain. It’s a pity because rural Canadians and their politicians just completed what is supposed to be a five-week political conversation about future directions.
