IT WOULD be an assignment worthy of a doctoral student in agricultural
economics – design a farm aid distribution formula that is accepted
across Canada as fair.
Good luck.
Every time Ottawa announces its intention to dish out some cash, the
debate over how becomes as divisive and cantankerous as the issue of
how much.
Canada often seems to be a nation bound together mainly by suspicion of
others; suspicion that another region, class or group is getting a
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better deal from the Confederation bargain than they deserve.
It befits a country riven by history, geography, regionalism,
intergovernmental sparring and above all, envy.
So it is with farm aid.
The battle over the rules for distributing the federal government’s
latest $600 million aid package illustrates the point.
Federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief was trying to make it as
simple and uncontroversial as possible: get the money out fast, try to
direct as much of it as possible to struggling smaller grains and
oilseeds farmers and make sure that at least from Ottawa’s standpoint,
all farmers across the country were treated the same.
He decided the Net Income Stabilization Account program was the best
vehicle.
It is a program widely praised, with similar rules for farmers across
the land.
He floated the proposal, along with the suggestion that more than 80
percent of the money would apply to the first $100,000 of net eligible
sales.
Then the manure hit the spreader.
Biasing it to smaller farmers is more like a social program than farm
aid, complained Ontario, where farms are more diversified and net
eligible sales tend to be higher.
Farm groups joined the chorus, arguing that farmers should be equally
compensated for unit of hurt, no matter how big.
Then, using NISA was denounced as an act of unacceptable centralizing.
Rather than a national program, Ottawa should send the money to
provincial capitals to be spent as they and their farm groups see fit.
Others insisted all the money should go to grains and oilseeds
producers, since they are the people hurt by American subsidies, even
though Ottawa has insisted the money is to offset far more than foreign
subsidies.
Meanwhile, some of the Saskatchewan Rally Group activists have insisted
for years that aid should be distributed on an acreage basis, meaning
Saskatchewan would receive close to half the national allotment.
On the other side of that same ledger, Ontario and Alberta led a
successful campaign several years ago to bias the distribution formula
in favour of larger agricultural provinces at the expense of more
disaster-prone Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
On and on the debate goes, pitting region against region, farm sector
against farm sector, big against small.
Every new chapter in the seemingly endless journey of trying to find a
fair and accepted aid distribution formula reminds politicians and
officials of the curious political truism that it really is difficult
to give away money and make more friends than enemies while doing it.
Maybe the Americans have it right: “Hello, this is Washington calling.
Are you a farmer? OK, do you have a pulse? Great, do you need money?
Thought so, how much? Coming right up and don’t spend it all in one
place.”
