QUEBEC CITY — Ralph Goodale, unilingual Prairie boy who has vowed to get to know Quebec better so he can be agriculture minister for all Canadians, may find himself in the uncomfortable position next year of being an issue in the expected Quebec referendum battle.
Whether westerners think it is fair or not, Quebec political and farm interests are closely watching how Goodale handles the Crow Benefit issue.
They think it is their issue too.
And according to his own timetable, Goodale wants to make decisions about the future of the Western Grain Transportation Act by next summer, smack in the middle of the referendum season if the Parti QuŽbecois wins the Sept. 12 provincial election.
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If Goodale decides to pay the subsidy directly to farmers, Quebec separatists (and many alleged federalists) will seize it as another example of a federal government that favors the West, to Quebec’s detriment.
Even in the Quebec election campaign, the Crow Benefit is in the shadows, mentioned by separatist candidates as a federalist weak spot and noted by farm lobbyists as an issue to watch.
“There is no doubt this is an issue Quebec feels it could be a loser on,” one public official familiar with the Quebec agriculture file said last week. “It is one the province will be watching, a kind of test case about the federal Liberal attitude to Quebec.”
It is one of those issues that illustrates the Great Divide that is the Ottawa River.
Prairie farmers have trouble understanding why Quebec is even given a say in the issue.
Quebeckers, who say their tax dollars have helped send billions of federal dollars west to aid Prairie grain farmers over the past decades, can’t understand why the question is asked.
Now, they hear proposals to convert that subsidy into an income support that could be used to build hog barns or poultry operations to compete with Quebec farmers.
“That would be unfair,” Quebec dairy farmer Jean-Luc LeClair said last week. “We think that federal policy should at least be equitable to all regions.”
That touches on two more mirror-image impressions that mark the divide.
East of the river, Quebec farmers see themselves as having built a provincial income support system that costs governments little while stabilizing the sector. Westerners tend to see Quebec as Confederation’s spoiled child, protected and coddled by federal governments.
West of the divide, Prairie farmers see themselves as market-oriented entrepreneurs who have fallen on some hard times but basically don’t want government subsidy. Quebeckers look at recent Prairie subsidy numbers and see western subsidy addiction and pro-western favoritism by federal governments who seem always to appoint unilingual English agriculture ministers.
Such are the perceptions that unite Canadian farmers in angry belief that someone else is getting a better deal from Ottawa.
Such are the conflicting perceptions Goodale must deal with as he tries to make a mark as agriculture minister for all Canada.
