For the next year, this column will mark The Western Producer’s 100th anniversary by taking a deep dive every week into a past issue of the paper.
The farm debt crisis of the 1980s was easy to spot in the March 31, 1983, issue.
First were a couple of stories about plans to pass farm debt relief legislation.
A private member’s bill proposed resurrecting the 1934 Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act.
The Producer reported that there had been urgency around the legislation when it was introduced, but MPs involved with the bill said the sense of urgency had since faded.
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Meanwhile, Saskatchewan Credit Union Central said that despite the divisions that were appearing among farm groups over the proposed legislation, credit unions didn’t think it would affect them very much.
“It doesn’t change much, it just adds another step,” said CUC’s Norman Bromberger.
“Foreclosure is a long, slow process, so the credit unions do not see any problem with it.”
Closer to the ground, an Ontario beef producer who had been charged with theft for leading a “penny auction” to stop the forced sale of a bankrupt farmer’s equipment had recently made an appearance in Reston, Man., where 200 farmers turned out to hear him speak.
Allen Wilford was president of the Ontario-based Canadian Farm Survival Association, which the Producer described as a “radical farming group.”
Wilford, who had just been released from jail following a hunger strike, told his audience that Canadian bankers were “the most immoral bunch I’ve ever seen.”
In other news, a coroner’s inquest into the 1982 death of a farm worker in British Columbia due to pesticide poisoning had recommended transferring responsibility for pesticide registration to Health and Welfare Canada and Environment Canada from Agriculture Canada.
Prime minister Pierre Trudeau said he would consider the suggestion, which had been requested for several years, but he didn’t think it would do anything to improve the health conditions of farm workers.
The PM didn’t win this one because today the Pest Management Regulatory Agency manages pesticides in this country. It is a division of Health Canada.
