It’s the fault of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture that Canada’s agriculture policies have been a unmitigated disaster for the last 20 years.
Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have the courage to fashion their own agriculture policies. For years they have simply rubber-stamped what the Canadian Federation of Agriculture has asked and it, in turn, develops its policies from the research and political clout of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.The result has been record-high subsidies and trade barriers, declining research and declining regulatory vigilance. It’s therefore not surprising that Canada’s position as a world exporter of food and agriculture products has steadily declined, nor that imports steadily take a larger share of the Canadian market.
Farmers have lobbied loud and hard for subsidies and federal and provincial politicians have answered their every plea – sometimes later than farmers hoped, sometimes with less money than they sought, but always with substantial subsidies.
And then, when the finance minister and treasury board minister demand cuts to reduce deficits, the agriculture department has cut research, manpower and therefore knowledgeable, experienced officials to enforce regulations.
There has never been radical reform of meat inspection despite decades of scandals and problems. The basic problem is that the dregs of the veterinary profession runs that shop and successive agriculture ministers have lacked the wisdom and courage to call for expert outside opinion, such as inviting the Danes or the Japanese to examine our Canadian Food Inspection Agency and offer advice.
The state of inspection and discipline for the feed industry is abysmal, even though feed is the single largest cost of producing meat, milk and eggs.
There is no attempt to really inspect or discipline fertilizer blenders and retailers. What exists is a joke because only those who want to have the government check their products submit samples. And more than half of those samples routinely flunk the standard of value for money.
As recently as 1970, the federal agriculture department ran the largest and oldest research establishment in Canada. Universities, such as the University of Guelph, added their prowess, especially in basic research and getting messages out to farmers.
Those were the days when Canadian agriculture was recognized as a world leader. No more. Today China has many more agricultural researchers than Canada and they have already surpassed some of the best research Canadians have to offer.
While Canada’s federal bureaucrats twiddle their thumbs over advances such as transgenics (eg. the environmentally-friendly Enviropig) and cloning for livestock productivity and health, the Chinese have a more realistic approach to the balance of risks vs. opportunities and are forging ahead.Various prime ministers have waxed eloquent about the gains to be realized from research, innovation and free trade. Under their leadership, Canadian agriculture has declined in all three categories.
Our highest trade barriers have been deliberately designed to coddle dairy and poultry farmers. They used to have protection via import quotas. Now they have even greater protection via sky-high tariffs. As a result, dairy and poultry farmers are richer today than ever in the history of North American agriculture. Almost all of them are millionaires; some of them, such as Ontario’s two largest egg companies, count the value of their quota holdings alone at more than $100 million.
Yet no agriculture minister, neither federal nor provincial, dares criticize the excesses and abuses of the farmer-run marketing boards. They appoint supervisory commissions, then stack the directorships with farmers whose passion is defending supply management.
So, farmers who want farm policy changes don’t need to bother voting in the upcoming federal and Ontario elections. Save your energies for radical reforms at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. That’s where Canada’s farm policies, disastrous as they have been, are fashioned.
