IN THE five months since Ottawa and most provincial agriculture
ministers signed the Agricultural Policy Framework in Halifax, there
has been a growing chorus of demands from provinces and farm leaders
for a glimpse of Ottawa’s thinking on program design.
There has been growing unease among farmers. Where are we headed, what
tools will we have and when will we know?
Principles of renewed and strengthened safety net programs with stable
funding for five years are fine. Where are the details?
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Agriculture Canada officials may have been working to a logical game
plan in all of this but from the outside, it is clear the department
botched the communications.
While insisting that time was needed for the necessary consultations,
the department was sowing confusion by having one-on-one discussions
with provinces and leaving its intentions or proposals open to
different interpretations in different provincial capitals.
Quebec, while it has yet to sign the APF, seems to think it will be
able to keep its provincial cost-of-production based companion program
intact, while other provinces have been told they cannot.
Some provinces had the impression that new programs would have to be in
place by spring 2003.
Federal minister Lyle Vanclief did not help by at times appearing to be
saying both – insisting one moment that the world won’t change at the
stroke of midnight March 31, 2003 while insisting the next that if new
programs are not in place by April 1, 2003, cabinet may take back some
of the $5.2 billion over five years that it promised the APF last
summer.
Confused yet? If so, join the club.
Increasingly, the provinces have been worrying that there was method
behind the federal approach. Keep the cards close to the vest, produce
details late in the day and then tell provinces there is little time to
modify federal proposals before the deadline when federal dollars start
dropping off the table.
This has been anything but classic federal-provincial co-operative
federalism.
Late last week, to try to set the stage for next week’s meeting of
federal and provincial ministers and to answer some of the criticism,
Vanclief released a 25-page “discussion document” offering some federal
proposals.
If implemented, they would trigger a major reworking of the way
government programs backstop agriculture’s bottom line in a cyclical
economy.
Many of the proposals will be controversial. With seeding less than
four months away, there is little time for serious federal-provincial
negotiations.
But at least the federal government has put its ideas on the table and
that is a start.
Flashpoint issues to watch for next week include provincial and farm
reaction to Ottawa’s proposal that provincial companion programs
tailored to local needs must be phased out and reaction to proposals
that the Net Income Stabilization Account program be given a much
broader mandate than income stabilization.
Ottawa wants NISA to become a vehicle for serving a broader range of
needs, including disaster relief and farm expansion investment.
It also will bear watching whether provincial ministers emerge
confident they are not being set up by the federal government.
