The National Farmers Union (NFU) wants the upcoming federal budget to restore funding of agricultural programs cut by the previous Harper government, including the tree nursery and shelterbelt programs at Indian Head, and community pasture program, as well as regulate grain transportation and protect supply management, the Saskatoon-based farm group said Thursday.
The recommendations were part of the NFU’s submission to the Commons finance committee during its pre-budget consultation process in February. The federal budget will be tabled in Parliament next Tuesday.
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The NFU is also calling for the budget to: restore funding for public agriculture research, “correct the damage caused by ending the single-desk for wheat marketing,” and support agriculture climate change mitigation and adaptation programs.
NFU president Jan Slomp, an Alberta dairy farmer, said the Harper government cut a number of agricultural programs, dismantled the Canadian Wheat Board and “gave” its assets to a private company, and reduced or eliminated funding for a number of public agricultural research facilities. “(The Tories) created a lot of damage,” Slomp said in an interview Thursday.
The NFU estimates the direct and indirect costs of eliminating the CWB’s single-desk marketing authority and logistics co-ordination by the Harper government in 2012 has deprived the Canadian economy of “over $8 billion so far.”
The NFU wants the federal Liberal government to “establish and fund a mechanism to regulate the grain system to ensure all farmers have an equal opportunity to ship grain, to counteract the power of the major grain companies and to give priority in shipping to small grain companies, producer railcars and short-line railways.”
Another recommendation is to restore publicly funded agricultural research, especially plant breeding, which has been cut or eliminated by the previous government. “Historically, we had second-to-none public plant breeding in Canada,” Slomp said, citing the development of canola, which was made possible by public plant breeding programs in 1970s and ’80s. “Now it’s all in private hands.”
Supply-managed agriculture, such as dairy, poultry and egg production, is threatened by international trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The NFU says supply management should be protected by rejecting “allocation of parts of the Canada’s supply managed commodities markets to imports” and plugging loopholes allowing the “dumping of dairy protein produces into Canada’s markets.”
The budget should also “reinstate federal funding” of the community pasture program and the tree nursery and shelterbelt programs in Indian Head, which were phased out during the last term of the Harper government, the NFU said.