Excerpts from a Feb. 24 speech by federal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture meeting in Ottawa.
I’d like to start off with a concept that I truly believe: if we are going to have success and be able to achieve our full potential, then both the urban and rural parts of this country need to be strong and vibrant.
A big part of ensuring that viability, a big part of making sure that Canada can indeed achieve its full potential, is the impact that agriculture has on our rural communities. Agriculture and other natural resource industries are key and critical to the long-term viability of rural Canada and therefore to Canada. One of the things that I try to do as the minister of agriculture and my colleagues in caucus try to do is to ensure that we can see that long-term viability….
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I’m not giving anybody any news by saying it’s been a difficult time for agriculture in this country. You just have to look at the figures to know that. But that’s not the important part of what to look at. Figures tell a story. But they’re just statistics. It’s understanding that real people stand behind those statistics. It’s understanding that families are behind those statistics. It’s understanding that communities are behind those statistics….
It’s got to be about understanding how it impacts folks and it’s got to be about understanding the need to have initiatives and programming that addresses individual people because if you think about it, agriculture isn’t anything if it isn’t about people, about the men and women who every day, every week, every year risk all that they have, put everything they can into it. And they do it, yes, for themselves and for their families. But they do it for much more broad things than that.
They do it for their communities and indeed what they do results in an invaluable contribution to the nation, to whether somebody lives in the smallest of hamlets or the largest of cities.
That’s also true even beyond our borders because we feed a big part of the world and we can never forget about that. Producers deserve the respect and the appreciation of Canadians….
Yesterday (Feb. 23) was budget day. I happen to believe that it was a good budget from a national perspective and I think it demonstrates sound fiscal management on behalf of the government. … It also dealt with agriculture and as the minister of agriculture, I want to talk about that …
First of all, since the budget of 2004, we’ve made new investments between what we announced in the fall and what we announced yesterday of some $674 million. That represents work that we’ve done with the BSE repositioning strategy, it represents work that we’ve done in enhancing the ability of CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) to deal with the issues of agriculture, and it represents $130 million where the details were put forward yesterday….
I was very pleased to see in the budget document that the federal government agrees with producers that it makes no sense to insist on a deposit to enter into the CAIS program. And we’re committed, I am personally committed, to work with the provinces to that end….
The budget also spoke about Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration. PFRA is a success story and those of you who have experienced dealing with them are primarily those in Western Canada but they have done work in other parts of the country as well, I hope you share with me that it’s a solid, sound organization and that they do good work.
Well, one of the suggestions that have come from producers, particularly those outside of Western Canada, is that you ought to take that kind of experience and expand it nationally. The budget spoke directly to doing that. It’s provided a little bit of money to get that off the ground but more importantly, it’s made the commitment to develop what we’ll refer to as the national environmental program that will encompass all of the country, that in no way is going to diminish what the PFRA does in the Prairies. …
The other thing that we saw in the budget that was announced was the $80 million to begin the process of complying to specified risk material removal from all animal feed. That’s an important objective that we are undertaking and I think the fact that we’re making the public investment signals something very important. …
I talked a lot about our programming but I want to come back to a theme that I oftentimes talk about, and that is as important as it is that the department of agriculture is making record payments, $4.8 billion, the highest it’s ever been, and that’s important because there’s a real need there and we need to continue to support that.
But in the long term, that’s not the measure of our success. It cannot be the measure of our success. In fact, it’s somewhat the opposite. The measure of our success is our ability to get a return for our investment and our labour from the market. That’s got to be the measure of our success. That’s got to be what we’re striving to do and that’s what we have to do as governments is to help create that environment.
That’s what Wayne Easter is doing as a parliamentary secretary. That’s why he was across the country talking to producers so that we can start to focus ourselves not just on the short term, not just on those kinds of support programs, not to suggest that they’re not important and not critical and that they will always be necessary in one form or another but that we need to deal with the ability to earn a living from the marketplace….
As minister of agriculture, I have a very straightforward role. I have many roles but one of them is very straightforward. I’m the advocate for producers. That’s what I do. That’s what my job is. Now, I want to be very honest with you. I don’t win all the battles. I don’t always get it my way. That’s the reality of the world that I operate in.
But I do want to tell you one thing. Win or lose, I will always be engaged, I always will be fighting the fight.
That is my pledge to producers. That’s my pledge to the industry is that I’ll be there, making the case, advocating, dealing in the debate. And I’ll win some and when we’re not as successful as we want to be, we’ll pick up the pieces and we’ll just go back out there the next day and make the case again until we are successful….
