McBride is the president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan.
It seems like a perennial occurrence. Farmers and farm groups lobby government for money, for extended deadlines to programs, to flow money and programs faster. Producers are not asking government for handouts, but for an investment in their industry in much the same way other countries invest in their agriculture.
Governments in Canada treat agricultural support as a sociopolitical issue, as opposed to an economic issue. With this in mind, it is time real questions are asked.
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In Canada, producers are expected to extract their revenue from the marketplace. Power in the marketplace comes with reducing competition for your product or combining with your competitors to enhance the market influence.
Reducing the supply so you do not over- supply profitable demand is another tool for success. Producers in Canada have had access to these tools through things like supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board and have had some success with them. According to our government, it is now time for farmers to give them up.
Why are we opposed to empowering our farmers in Canada?
Many other segments of Canadian society have access to empowerment tools:
- Labour has unions within Canada that provide it with a tool for empowerment.
- Technology development companies have patent laws.
- Machinery, like many other inventions, is patent protected.
- Regulation stops competing chemicals from coming into Canada, which effectively protects the company that registered a product for many years from needing to compete for that market.
- Taxicabs are licensed and regulated so there are a limited number in a city, to ensure that there are not too many to be profitable.
- Airlines are protected through regulation from international competition.
These are examples of tools that some Canadians are able to use. Some of these do increase the cost of farming in Canada. Through the use of these tools, governments are saying it is OK for agricultural inputs to be supply managed and it is OK for fuel and fertilizer companies to work together to manage the supply.
Why is it that agriculture producers cannot have access to the tools that are provided to some of the rest of our society?
Why is it not OK for farmers to manage their supply?
On a global scale, Canada agrees to trading rules with other countries, but then says “we cannot afford to compete with subsidies in other countries like the United States,” leaving Canadian farmers with less income than their competitors.
Meanwhile, Canada protects some Canadian agriculture input suppliers from import competition from other countries.
This leaves farmers with the responsibility to pay the made-in-Canada costs with revenue from an international marketplace while competing with U.S. farmers who receive additional, substantial money from their government, plus have the same market revenue as Canadian producers, plus have a lower cost on some inputs because of greater access to international markets for inputs and less restrictive regulation.
This means Canadian producers are forced to compete with both U.S. producers and the U.S. treasury.
So the next question is, why does Canada involve itself in trade talks with nearly 150 countries to develop rules for trade and subsidies without any notion of providing the level of subsidization that our competitor countries have, and that are allowed by the rules?
Governments in Canada are not opposed to supporting other segments of society or other sectors of the economy. So, if we are going to get real about agriculture in Canada, let’s ask the real questions:
Do Canadians want agriculture in Canada? If so, are they willing to pay?
