Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has accepted one of the 90
recommendations from the Red Tape Commission – to eliminate one regulation for
each new one the government adopts.
I'd have more respect for Ritz if he gave us a list of some regulations he's prepared to eliminate.
Far more important than eliminating regulations is the federal government's failure to enforce some of the key regulations on the books, such as Grade A eggs being, in fact, Grade A, fertilizers actually containing full value for label claims, feeds meeting registration standards and/or label claims and seed meeting standards for germination, variety integrity and weed-seed content.
But Ritz issued a press release to try to upstage the Red Tape Commission's findings that Canadian farmers are at a significant disadvantage because they can't get access to the pesticides and veterinary biologics that will keep them competitive.
And he even deigned to boast that the government is working with a joint
Canada-U.S. committee to streamline pesticide registrations so our farmers keep up with U.S. competitors.
He either does not know, or chose not to comment, on the
failure of pesticide companies to participate in this joint-registration system,
apparently convinced they can get products on the U.S. market faster by dealing with U.S. regulators rather than with the joint body.
And so Canadians continue to wait until the companies feel moved to file applications to market their products here. Some simply don't bother, leaving it up to Canadian farmers to file applications to catch up.
"Farming, not form-filling, made Canada's agriculture industry the
powerful economic driver it is today,” Ritz said in a news release.
“That's why our Government continues to work hard to help farmers make
their money from the marketplace, not the mailbox,” he said.
Now that's a real pile of rubish, coming from a federal government that spends the majority of its agriculture budget on cheques to go into farmers' mailboxes.
Some of what made Canadian agriculture great was world-leading research and plant breeding by scientists on the agriculture department's payroll and world-leading standards for quality, and the enforcement disciplines and mailbox incentives to ensure the standards were met.
For example, Canada once had by far the best purebred hogs in the world, backed by federal government research and subsidies to farmers who bought top-notch boars and marketed the highest-quality carcasses.
