With falling grain prices, summer pestilence and uncertainty about future marketing systems, most farmers understandably consider the federal-provincial division of powers no higher than 16th on a list of 15 priorities.
Yet it is a political issue with the potential to have a real impact on farmers.
And it is about to become a much more prominent issue in Canada.
Pressure for decentralization in an already very decentralized country will grow. The provinces, with big business allies, are pushing for transfer of more power from Ottawa to provincial capitals.
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Agriculture will be very much a part of it. It is a shared jurisdiction but for the past half century, Ottawa has put up most of the money for program spending and has called most of the shots.
Federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief seems to want to continue that federal presence, even though dollar transfers have fallen.
Yet some provinces already are balking, suggesting that Ottawa simply turn over block sums of money to them to cost-share support programs the provinces design.
The Reform Party, now the official opposition in Parliament, calls for the provinces to assume most responsibility for agriculture planning and program delivery.
Meanwhile, Big Business is renewing its demands for decentralization, using the catch-phrase “rebalancing” to mean a weaker Ottawa and stronger provinces.
Last week in New Brunswick, Alberta premier Ralph Klein presented proposals from the Business Council on National Issues to the annual premiers’ meeting.
The lobby of Canada’s biggest companies want a weaker Ottawa, no interprovincial trade barriers, less government and more economic freedom.
Although they do not talk specifically about agriculture, their proposals could lead to a weakening of national supply management controls, less power for Ottawa to set national standards for agricultural programs and more power for provincial governments to design programs for their own farmers, at least in the short term.
However, in the longer term, it is difficult to imagine that the Big Business lobby is not proposing a system which would make it more difficult for any level of government to control them.
A devolution of power necessarily means that large companies looking for better investment conditions will have weaker governments with which to bargain for concessions.
The smaller the government, the less able it will be to stand up to a multinational company with an annual cash flow close to the provincial budget.
Smaller government does not mean more powerful individual citizens. More likely, it means that powerful business interests will cast a longer shadow.
It is easy to understand why provincial premiers with dreams of more authority could be seduced by this argument.
It is not so clear that ordinary Canadians should be cheering. Individual farmers, even if they have more immediate things to worry about, might consider telling their lobbyists to get involved in this decentralization debate.
