Western Producer staff
It is easy enough to be dismissive or skeptical about the study of the future of agriculture policy being launched by MPs and Senators this summer.
What can it possibly accomplish, other than let the newer MPs see most of Canada at taxpayers’ expense?
Just watch us, the politicians told the skeptics last week.
“We will work very hard,” said co-chair Sen. Dan Hays. “I urge people to keep an open mind on this.”
Co-chair MP Bob Speller said the object is to offer some “strategic ideas” for appropriate future policy.
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And it will give industry leaders, as well as individual farmers, a chance to offer their own ideas on what should happen.
All these are noble-sounding goals.
Still, the question remains: can anything substantive be achieved?
Is it worth the tens of thousands of dollars taxpayers will have to fork out to fly these people all over the country and to pay support staff?
At first glance, the project has all the earmarks of a make-work project for politicians, a superficial, quick-hit stroll through one of the country’s more complicated industries.
Over the next seven months of on-again, off-again hearings, the committee will hear from “experts,” scores of official witnesses, dozens of farmers and a variety of special pleaders about what ails Canadian food policy and what has to be done to fix it for the next couple of decades.
The list of topics they expect to hear evidence about, and to ponder, is extensive.
The following example of hobby horse topics, picked up from committee members last week, offers a glimpse of just some of the issues the parliamentary committee will be investigating: farm safety, use of child labor on farms, trade rules, trade opportunities, financing arrangements, federal-provincial relations, rural development, tax policy, marketing arrangements, sustainability, transportation and safety nets.
As well, it will become a forum for the debate over whether less or more government is the answer.
And this is a far from comprehensive list. To an outsider, it seems like a lot to bite off for a committee with a small staff, little focus and a seven-month timetable. Royal commissions with three-year mandates and multi-million dollar budgets have been created to tackle less onerous tasks.
Library shelves also groan with reports from previous “blueprints for agriculture,” most of which have been overtaken by politics, world trade conditions or weather before they could leave much of a permanent mark on the real world.
Yet this crop of politicians vows to complete in-depth analysis and offer policy wisdom that will help policy-makers create programs and policies to allow farmers, processors and other food industry interests to prosper into the next century.
The challenge will be to produce something more than a series of motherhood, predictable recommendations about the need for smart spending, freer trade, more research and aggressive marketing.
Sen. Hays can be assured we will be watching.
