Heard an interestingly honest presentation from an OMAF assistant deputy minister today about his experiences and perspectives from the can/prov meeting. Mostly backed up what most would probably already suspect, but never thought we'd hear from a civil servant.
Suggested fairly strongly that CAIS was designed not with the farmer in mind but to further the cause of NAFTA and WTO in regards to globalization of agriculture. Also suggested very strongly that the move on ag policy is that if farmers can't make it on CAIS and CAIS alone, farmers should find something else to do and the federal and provincial governments will soon be (if they aren't already) perfectly willing to let Canadians buy their food wherever it's cheapest, regardless of any kind of standards. Apparently the feds were very clear that they haven't heard ANY dissent about CAIS from western farm groups. He also emphasized repeatedly the recent report from CAPI suggesting that any future ag policy be designed only for the upper 50% of farms in Canada and that this is getting a lot of play in policy circles.
Also separately heard that the feds are having a lot of problem with developing policy, all their policy people are firmly based in the west and they're having a hard time convincing anybody to uproot their families to move to Ottawa with an uncertain minority. End result is that many of the ministers haven't even been briefed about their portfolios yet! For example, Strahl hadn't been briefed on Kyoto or any of the ag environmental subjects as of about 3 weeks ago.
Suggested fairly strongly that CAIS was designed not with the farmer in mind but to further the cause of NAFTA and WTO in regards to globalization of agriculture. Also suggested very strongly that the move on ag policy is that if farmers can't make it on CAIS and CAIS alone, farmers should find something else to do and the federal and provincial governments will soon be (if they aren't already) perfectly willing to let Canadians buy their food wherever it's cheapest, regardless of any kind of standards. Apparently the feds were very clear that they haven't heard ANY dissent about CAIS from western farm groups. He also emphasized repeatedly the recent report from CAPI suggesting that any future ag policy be designed only for the upper 50% of farms in Canada and that this is getting a lot of play in policy circles.
Also separately heard that the feds are having a lot of problem with developing policy, all their policy people are firmly based in the west and they're having a hard time convincing anybody to uproot their families to move to Ottawa with an uncertain minority. End result is that many of the ministers haven't even been briefed about their portfolios yet! For example, Strahl hadn't been briefed on Kyoto or any of the ag environmental subjects as of about 3 weeks ago.
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