Stephen Harper and Chuck Strahl are appearing at a live news conference at a farm about 20 miles from here at the moment, covered on local radio. They are about to announce that CAIS is being retired and replaced.
Harper makes a few intro comments and
Our government recognizes more needs to be done, especially about rising costs of production… input costs have risen over 3 times faster than product prices… and that’s what brings me here today.
$1 billion in new money for income stabilization … modelled on conventional bank savings accounts … an annual cost of production benefit… inviting provinces to share in funding.
Basics are now up at the AAFC website.
cutter; you are envious, I think. Do something with your life -you will feel better.
To be honest about it, on the surface it does “look” hypocritical to on one hand, laud the sanctity and utopia of a free market, abolish the wheat board etc but then on the other hand welcome this announcement of government cash into the pockets of grain producers. If it gets there!
But one could argue that every where you look at the political process there is bald faced hypocrisy. For example Dion, who is from QUEBEC praising and defending the perceived attributes of the WESTERN Canadian Wheat Board that has controlled or influenced the grain industry in “Western Canada” for decades, where, on their (Liberals and CWB) watch there has been, in Saskatchewan a serious and worrisome lack of generational turn over of farms, resulting in the average age being well over 60, as well as flat or falling land prices province wide. How is a man to retire?? What protection has the CWB been for us?
Mean while in Quebec…Mr. Dion’s province, the average age is some where in the low forties, as well as strong and rising land prices. Confidence in the future, and profitability, the driving force! Why? Which region seems to have been better served??
I don’t see a conflict between the desire for a free market and yet at the same time welcome new federal monies…and for this reason. Not since the time of kings has their ever been a free and open grain market. Grain…or “wheat” has, since “the time of Kings,” been used as a political tool to further the agenda of the state.
Until other “states” stop all subsidies to grain producers…which is a pipe dream I think…we will have to accept the fact, that to survive, and to see a healthy western farm economy, subsidies are a necessary evil. A vibrant western Canadian grain industry can be achieved the same way it has seen Quebecs ag industry thrive. Not with a single desk seller and pooling system where every one gets the same low price but rather through direct and generous subsidies directed to the farm gate of every producer.
Payments to farmers in Quebec are acreage based, cost of production based, and this is the neat one, they are based on 90% of a skilled workers salary ie nurse, teaher, policeman!!
In 1999 the average payment per farm was $95,000…Alberta money making it all possible…of course!