1.3 Billion

[countryguy]

I see that our provincial lobbying groups have got together and are once again asking for a payout.I believe Ontario is also onside.Dalek?What can we do to get support from the cities and towns that rely on agriculture and what can we do as farmers to strengthen the forces and make it happen this time?We must make ourselves heard.

[cowman]

I sincerely doubt it will happen. How can Van Clief go down to Washington and preach to them and then turn around and open the purse? I think all that we'll see is more studies...which is the governments way of saying NO MONEY!!!

[dalek]

In Ontario we've been looking for payments pretty much since fall of 2000. Support is there in the cities and towns, although I don't think any of them are willing to work to help us they are mainly supportive or ambivalent at worst. Most of the Liberal MPs also support us interestingly enough, and many of them have brought the issue up. The resistance is all in the upper levels of the Liberal government, my guess would be Chretien and Martin and more importantly the unelected who control them.

[carebear300]

Tomorrow our illustrious minister of agriculture along with his equally stubborn and unsympathetic deputy will meet with the provincial ministers of agriculture to discuss problems relating to agriculture. I am almost positive that behind closed doors they will come to the conclusion that farmers are a very important and valued part of our society but they will have to make it on their own because we spent all our spare money on raises for ourselves, executive jets, pork barrel payoffs in Quebec and support for our favourite political supporter, Bombardier. Once again I hope that I am proved wrong but I have great confidence that our agriculture minister will once again turn his back on the farmers of this country.

[carebear300]

This time I lost all patience with our so called federal agriculture minister, he once again announced there will be no more money for grain producers because the government couldn't afford to compete with the american subsidy program but there were other things they could do to help farmers. Well in case his economic advisors haven't told him it takes money to run a farm and if you don't have money you don't survive. I guess that contrary to what we have been led to believe in the past week that this liberal government and its spineless back benchers don't give a dam whether this industry survives or not.

[cowman]

Well I'm not really up on this but I think he reluctantly agreed to sort of look into finding some money. I think he talked about shuffling some money around or something!!
In other words fiddling while Rome burns!! If it stays dry the outcry could get pretty loud. It will be interesting to see how the Liberals will avoid spending any money. Afterall the employees at Bombardier are after some big bucks right now....might need to help out the company with some more fat government contracts!!