Steve Crocker of
Newfoundland and Labrador hosted a meeting of federal and provincial
agriculture ministers this week, but other than that, there’s little
that has been revealed about their discussions.
The communique
issued at the end said only that they talked about a new deal on
shared programs and funding and about the importance of free trade,
both within Canada and with other nations.
There has been no
indication from any of the recent meetings about what the sticking
points are for a new cost-sharing suite of programs for “business
risk management,” meaning price supports and subsidies.
There was also no
word on the friction points on free inter-provincial trade. For
example, they have been mum about ending the ban on trading chickens
between Ontario and Quebec or allowing farmers to buy quotas from
farmers in another province.
