Marie Claude-Bibeau maintains her role as federal Minister of Agriculture, a cabinet position she has held since being appointed in 2019.

Omar Alghabra maintains his role as federal Minister of Transport, a cabinet position he was appointed to in January 2021.

Steven Guilbeault was appointed Minister of Environment and Climate Change, replacing Jonathan Wilkinson, now Minister of Natural Resources, who had held the position since 2019.

Gudie Hutchings was sworn in as Canada’s Minister of Rural Economic Development, replacing Maryam Monsef who lost her seat in an Ontario riding in the federal election.

Joyce Murray takes over as Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, from Bernadette Jordan who also lost her seat in a Nova Scotia-riding after the federal election.

– With files from Reuters.

The post Bibeau keeps role as federal ag-minister, Canada gets a new environment minister appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Polling suggests the CPC vote share could be on the rise, and there is a chance the party sweeps all the seats in Saskatchewan again – this time with a higher share of the vote than in 2019.

We’ve seen how this plays out in an election before.

Farmers won’t be seen as a valuable voting bloc.

Outside of a few local ridings, don’t expect parties to put in any particular effort to win over that vote.

Political organizers in opposition parties know the 14 Conservative-held seats in Saskatchewan, for example, are likely to stay that way.

Most of those seats aren’t considered “winnable” and party resources will instead be diverted to ridings that are.

(I expect the Liberals will put in at least a half-hearted effort for the Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River seat, where the left-leaning vote often splits with the NDP to deliver a CPC MP.)

Having had a Liberal government since 2015, we have a pretty good sense in the value of having CPC members represent Prairie farmers.

Farmers, what has the CPC done for you lately?

It is tough to deliver results from the opposition benches, and the CPC hasn’t been in power since 2015.

At least of this writing, the Erin O’Toole-led CPC seems destined to stay in opposition (my way-too-early bold guess: the CPC has another leadership race in its near future).

In the absence of being able to govern, CPC members were looked to be a viable opposition to the Liberals and the policies they brought in.

Advocate on behalf of constituents, rail against bad government policy. Be the opposition.

Here, too, the CPC has largely failed in recent years – particularly when it counted most.

Producers strongly opposed carbon pricing, for example, but the CPC was unable to do anything to stop that policy from impacting farmers.

Conservative provincial governments on the Prairies couldn’t stop it, either.

Any tweaks to carbon pricing (like offering further exemptions on certain fuels) that were eventually ushered in came more at the behest of the countless ag-related lobby groups operating in Ottawa than the CPC.

Once seen by some as an existential threat to modern agriculture, carbon pricing has now been in place since 2019 across the country and is poised to stay here.

The CPC now supports the policy, and any continued farmer opposition will fall on sympathetic, but mostly deaf, ears. The ship has sailed.

Farmers, compared to other industries, don’t need to rely on opposition members to represent their interests.

Producers support, and pay out of pocket, for a litany of organizations to represent their interests in Ottawa – perhaps more than any other industry in Canada.

Canada’s minister of agriculture regularly ranks among the most lobbied of politicians, and there seems to be a lobby or advocacy group in agriculture related to everything.

(For what it’s worth, none of those efforts were able to stop carbon pricing, either.)

It is also difficult for the CPC to now oppose the Liberals – on ag policy and other issues – because since the 2019 election, Liberals have regularly been supported by the CPC.

CPC members helped usher in Liberal policies during this minority government.

Sure there have been a handful of Conservative private member’s bills that passed in the most recent minority government, like one offering more punishment for animal activists who trespass onto a farm.

These will be welcomed by farmers, but in terms of substantive issues, don’t rank in the same stratosphere as issues like carbon pricing.

For farmers, the CPC has failed as an opposition, but it continues to be seen as the party with a better understanding of agriculture.

Conservative leadership knows this – but it is all kind of irrelevant, because no matter what, most farmers will still vote for it.

This is likely why there isn’t anything related to agriculture in the Conservative Party of Canada platform to get excited about.

Line by line, the party’s ag proposals are almost identical to what the Liberals are currently doing.

And that makes sense, because despite some challenging times, under a Liberal government, agriculture has continued to be a stable and growing industry.

Producers will once again support the Conservatives in the 2020 election.

Before doing so, they should ask themselves why.

The post Comment: Is it worth voting Conservative again? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

We don’t know when an election is coming, but politicians and staffers are preparing to hit the campaign trail.  

Here is what is clear now.  

First, Parliament is scheduled to resume sitting Sept. 20. The minority Liberals survived the most recent session without falling to a non-confidence vote. 

If there is going to be an election soon, it will be at the request of Trudeau. 

Second, Nova Scotia’s election will likely influence Canada’s.  

Speculation of an election being called in that province is higher than it is in Ottawa, and laws dictate one take place before May 30, 2022. 

An election would be held no less than 30 days after the date of the official election call. 

There seems to be an expectation the Liberals will wait to avoid having any overlap.   

This being early July, there is enough runway for both writs to be dropped.  

An election around Sept. 13 looks like a lot of sense when I look at my calendar, and I’ve found political insiders circling dates around then, too.  

Beyond the logistical timing, an election being had right now could favour the Liberals. 

If Trudeau were to go to the polls, he would be doing so knowing incumbent governments in provinces across the country were returned to power.  

His Liberals will be asking for voter support just as optimism from summer openings increase, and vaccines roll out.  

Because it appears we’re in the final stages of, as opposed to finally done with, COVID-19, Trudeau can keep the focus on his track record of governing through the pandemic.  

Overall, Canadians have generally told pollsters they were comfortable with the government’s approach. As of this writing, the Liberals were polling double digits ahead of the Conservatives. 

Liberals will look to turn that perceived support into a stronger mandate.  

At the same time, however, the pandemic may have fundamentally changed how Canadians view themselves. 

COVID-19 brought a heightened focus on the disproportionate impact it was having on certain communities. The impact poor government policy and systematic failures has on First Nations communities is, finally, being recognized across the country. The economy is rebounding, but experts are still cautious. Evidence of the ongoing climate crisis engulfs Canadians on a near-daily basis.  

Under those circumstances, securing the extra 15 seats needed to restore a majority Liberal government won’t be easily had, particularly as opponents look to capitalize on ongoing scandals within Trudeau’s ranks.  

While we don’t know when it will be taking place, now is a particularly good time to bring appeals to politicians, or prospective ones.  

Soon enough, they could be asking for your support.  

The post Opinion: As an election looms appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Essential temporary foreign workers and international grads from Canadian schools will be able to apply for one of the 90,000 new permanent residencies.

There are 30,000 spots dedicated to temporary workers in selected essential occupations, meaning farm and processing workers fitting the other criteria could qualify. According to the federal government, applicants must have at least one year of work experience in one of Canada’s pre-approved essential occupations.

Applications for the program are online via the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada website until November 5.

Without permanent status, temporary workers in Canada aren’t entitled to the same rights as others making a living in the country. Access to alternative work, health care and education are often limited.

Advocates contend the new program is the latest in a series of public policy failures surrounding migrant workers. According to a report from the Migrant Rights Network that evaluates the program, arbitrary caps and tight timelines lead to only workers in the “best situations” being able to apply.

According to the Migrants Rights Network, close to 500,000 migrant workers will be competing for 50,000 permanent residence positions once the student quota is filled.

“This means that many of the same people the government has celebrated as essential, working in health care, farms, grocery stores, delivery, warehouses, cleaning and construction, will continue to be excluded,” write the authors of Exclusion, Disappointment, Chaos and Exploitation: Canada’s New Short-Term Immigration Pathway.

A survey of 3,000 migrant workers found 61 per cent would be eligible to apply for a position, but because of other criteria restrictions, about 75 per cent of respondents wouldn’t end up qualifying.

According to the network, many migrant farm workers with gaps in employment would not qualify for permanent residency under the new program.

Language requirements are also being criticized. According to the survey, 67 per cent of the workers don’t have proper language accreditations.

“This is especially of concern to non-English-speaking migrant workers, including Spanish-speaking farm workers, who otherwise qualify but are being shut out,” the report says.

International farm workers located in rural parts of the country, meanwhile, are having trouble accessing testing centres already struggling to keep up with heightened demand.

The post Feds’ pathway to permanent residency program under fire appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The Trudeau government has promised to lower the boom on what it characterizes as the abuse of private corporations by high-income individuals to avoid taxation.

Doctors have been especially vocal in their condemnation of the move, saying they have forgone fee increases in negotiations with provincial governments in exchange for the right to incorporate and lower their tax burden.

Now they’re decrying that what one level of government gave, another took away. With somewhere around two-thirds of Canadian doctors incorporated, it promises to fundamentally alter the economic reality of many doctors.

Lost in the busy summer season, however, has been the potential impact on farmers — about one-quarter of farms are incorporated. Edmonton-based accountant Allan Sawiak, of Kingston Ross Pasnak LLP, has been sounding the alarm in a recent letter to clients and farm groups.

In the document, Sawiak notes what he describes as “shocking” changes that will affect various strategies an increasing number of farms use to manage their tax burden.

• Read more on Country Guide: Incorporation pushes farms into higher gear

There’s “income sprinkling” which sees a corporation gain revenue, rather than an individual, and then splitting that income among family members in the form of salary or dividends, which serves to lower the overall tax bite.

The government says that in the future these payments will only be valid if family members are shown to have earned it either through their labour or through capital investments in the corporation. In particular, they’ve said they’ll be watching very closely payments made to children between the ages of 18 and 24.

So-called ‘passive investments’ are also under the gun, which refers to making investments in stocks and bonds through a business, rather than individually, and therefore paying a lower tax rate in the end.

The feds also say they’ll be cracking down on the use of the lifetime capital gains exemption, which shelters more than $835,000 of capital gains in qualifying small-business shares. Currently business people and their financial advisers are able to use the exemptions of many family members to protect capital gains from taxation. Once again, younger family members seem to be the target of the proposed changes.

Sawiak also notes that a proposed grace period for capital gains exemption may provide some relief, but will also create issues of its own, including boosting the amount of tax paid under the ‘alternative minimum tax’ system.

Perhaps most troubling for farmers is that the government appears to be proposing to crack down on the very concept of incorporating a small business like a farm. The federal government is proposing a crackdown on transactions that would prevent any transaction that creates income at a lower tax rate. Sawiak notes in his letter to clients that the proposals “… are broad enough that they could apply to common situations like selling farm assets to a corporation.”

It’s clear, according to financial professionals, that these changes aren’t small potatoes. They’re a fundamental alteration in the way that professionals and small business owners can use incorporation to manage their affairs.

Alan Acton, an Ontario-based financial adviser to doctors and finance columnist, recently noted the proposals fundamentally call into question whether there will be any benefit in the future to incorporation.

That would seem to dovetail nicely with the government’s goal and may placate some who feel the wealthy are given tax advantages that most Canadians cannot access. But it’s a simplistic analysis of the situation.

The truth is most of the people setting up a corporation are operating in a far different environment than most salaried and hourly employees.

They’re taking more risk. They’re funding more for themselves, such as retirement saving and other benefits like medical care. They therefore claim they need the structure of incorporation to do so.

Critics of the move warn of the risk of pushing out well-trained and mobile professionals and the chilling effect on entrepreneurship. They also note many of the affected may simply close up shop and move — something that’s not an option for a farmer.

For farmers perhaps the greatest risk is that the proposed changes now throw a lot of doubt on succession plans set up under the old rules. Many of these will now need to be revisited and perhaps revised.

The changes are set for this fall and farmers need to understand them, respond to government, and make sure their financial houses are in order.

The government is currently seeking input up until an Oct. 2 deadline.

While the timing is terrible, this might be important enough to park the combine long enough to write a letter.

The post Editorial: The taxman cometh appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The federal government has backed down a bit in a dispute with the European Union over the allocation of new tariff-free cheese imports.

It also said it would start accepting applications Aug. 22 from dairy farmers and processors for funding under transitional programs for improvements made to or planned for their operations to increase productivity.

Under the four-year $250-million Dairy Farm Investment Program, licensed producers can apply before next March for projects which were started after Nov. 10 last year, when Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced the program. The first-come, first-served program will cover up to 50 per cent of approved project costs, up to a maximum of $250,000.

Dairy processors are eligible for support under a $100-million program that covers new equipment and infrastructure, or provide access to specialized expertise to introduce new products or processes.

Dairy Farmers of Canada said the program will “mitigate some of the negative impact on Canada’s dairy farmers” coming from the trade deal.

• Read more: Dairy sector gets funds for technology, less import control than hoped

The government had acknowledged that the tariff-free access for an additional 17,700 tonnes of European cheese “would negatively impact Canadian dairy farmers. We are looking forward to seeing the Dairy Farm Investment Program in action to ensure that it functions as intended, and that the program has the ability to be adjusted if required, to truly benefit farmers.”

Pierre Lampron, newly elected president of Dairy Farmers of Canada, said his organization wanted the new cheese imports to go to the processors, “who would have imported cheeses that are not already produced in Canada, providing greater variety of cheeses to Canadian consumers, while supporting the continued growth of the Canadian dairy sector. Importing cheeses not already made in Canada would offer a greater variety of cheeses to Canadian consumers.”

DFC and Dairy Processors Association of Canada (DPAC) said the decision to split the quotas among cheese makers and retailers “missed an opportunity to support the future growth of the Canadian dairy industry.”

In June, the government said it planned to allocate 60 per cent of the new import quota to domestic dairy processors to sell. This caused one of many tempests between Brussels and Ottawa, as the two sides ironed out the details of the trade deal. The government cut that back to 50 per cent with the benefit going to retailers.

The additional cheese being admitted duty free under the Europe trade deal will equal about two per cent of Canadian milk production — representing 17,700 tonnes of cheese that will no longer be produced in Canada. Dairy Farmers of Canada says this is equivalent to the entire yearly production of Nova Scotia, and will cost Canadian dairy farmers up to $116 million a year in perpetual lost revenues.

The former Harper government had committed to provide the dairy industry with up to $4.3 billion worth of compensation to offset the impact of the trade deal. MacAulay said last year the Liberal government would honour that commitment but then backtracked to the $350-million program. DFC has questioned how many farmers will actually benefit from the funding.

MacAulay said the government wants to align program funding with the relative size of the milk quota in each province.

The dairy farm program will cover upgrades to the barn technology and equipment to improve productivity. The program will support large investments such as the adoption of robotic milkers and feeding system and small investments such as herd management and barn operation equipment.

The dairy-processing fund will provide up to $10 million for each capital investment project, such as installing new equipment and infrastructure, or up to $250,000 for each project to access technical, managerial or business expertise that could lead to new varieties of cheese coming to the market.

Jacques Lefebvre, president and CEO of the Dairy Pro­cessors Association of Canada, said Ottawa ignored provincial requests to have all the additional cheese quota go to dairy processors.

“When it comes to competition from European imports, our dairy sector is at a disadvantage,” he said. “Unlike the European sector which is heavily subsidized, the Canadian industry is not. Furthermore, the new cheeses coming into the market from Europe will enter Canada tariff free. While we are still early days, this will result in less production by Canadian cheese makers. In turn, this will impact Canadian dairy farmers who will not be producing the milk for these domestic cheeses. It is incumbent on the government to explain its logic to the 80,000 Canadian families that depend on our sector for their livelihood.”

The post Ottawa announced details of CETA assistance appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Canadian cattle and beef interests that expected to benefit from a trade deal with the European Union rejoiced Oct. 18, 2013, when the Conservative government announced a deal had been reached.

Negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement continued through August 2014, when a consolidated version of the agreement was made available.

However, it has yet to be ratified in Europe as various factions contemplated some of its non-agricultural implications, primarily the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process.

The ISDS issues were resolved in early March, but those in Canada’s beef industry are among those watching developments and hoping the promise first extended in 2013 will culminate in greater market access.

“Any new market is the right thing for Canada,” said Doug Price, who operates the beef side of Sunterra, the Alberta company operated by his family.

“We need to diversify our marketplace so we’re not totally reliant on the United States, so I’m pretty excited about that.”

It’s an opinion that is widespread among those in the beef industry, but CETA isn’t a done deal.

• Read more: CETA deal will open up new markets for Canadian beef

“Despite us having had several announcements that the deal was done and the negotiations were done, it doesn’t have the feel that it’s done,” said John Masswohl of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.

Trade historian Laura Dawson of the Canada Institute in Washington, D.C., also has her doubts.

“I am skeptical about the ability of the EU parliaments to ratify the agreement. Canada negotiated a good agreement and our negotiators did just fine, and the EU negotiators said, ‘great, got to do a legal scrub, got to translate it into all those pesky languages and we’re good to go.’”

The deal was negotiated by what was then Canada’s Conservative government. Since then, a new Liberal government was elected and is presumably getting up to speed on what CETA may entail.

“I think these next several months are going to be important,” Masswohl said in December.

“With the CETA agreement, I think there was a number of announcements about how the negotiations were concluded. Now you’ve got a new government… and it’s probably learning that the negotiations are not quite as concluded as perhaps the previous management would suggest.

“Our message to the new government is, the potential is there. This is an outstanding market, excellent potential. It deserves to be done. It needs to be done because this is an excellent agreement not just for Canadian beef producers, but for Canada overall. But it has to be what we think it is.”

The post Beef industry watching how new Liberal government proceeds appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Tracey Ramsey, the NDP’s international trade critic and MP for the southwestern Ontario riding of Essex, on March 8 tabled a motion in the Commons for Canada to set up a “payment protection program for produce growers like the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA)” in the U.S.

Up until October 2014, Canadian produce growers selling into the U.S. had been able to invoke PACA to recover payments through a U.S. federal trust if a U.S. buyer wouldn’t pay, or went bankrupt without paying.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), as of Oct. 1 that year, made good on previous threats to cut off Canadian growers’ access to PACA, unless the Canadian government came up with an equally effective dispute resolution process for defaults on perishable commodities.

Since then, Canadian producers have had to post a surety bond before they can file a formal complaint against a U.S. buyer for PACA adjudication.

Ramsey’s motion calls for Canada to set up, by Sept. 30 this year, a PACA-like system that “will allow sellers to maintain an ownership trust until payment has been received.”

The motion also calls for the government to take “immediate” steps to negotiate restoring Canada’s “privileged access” to U.S. PACA funds, with the aim of restoring access by Dec. 31 this year.

The previous Conservative government’s “inaction on this file has negatively impacted this important industry, and I urge the Liberal government to resolve the issue by year-end,” she said in an NDP release.

“Resolving this issue would not only give fair protection to produce sellers here in Canada, but return us to a level playing field for our fruit and vegetable exporters selling to the U.S., our largest market,” Ron Lemaire, president of the Canadian Produce Marketing Association (CPMA), said in the same release.

The motion holds the Liberals’ feet to the fire on the governing party’s election promise last fall to set up a PACA-like system in Canada.

“It is unacceptable that, despite months of warnings, the government dragged its heels and still has not resolved this dispute,” Nova Scotia MP Mark Eyking — then the Liberals’ agriculture critic, now chair of the Commons standing committee on international trade — said last fall in an Oct. 7 release.

The Tories’ “inaction put our Canadian producers of fresh fruits and vegetables at risk of non-payment for sales to the U.S., even though a single instance of non-payment could be enough to force one of our many small producers out of business.”

The Liberals at the time pledged to consult with the CPMA and Canadian Horticultural Council to create a comparable mechanism in Canada and work with the U.S. to reinstate PACA access.

“This will ensure payment for Canadian horticulture producers from companies that become insolvent or are slow to pay their bills, at no cost to taxpayers,” the party said at the time.

“Resolving this dispute is crucial for the sector, whose trade in fresh produce with the U.S. is worth over a billion dollars a year.”

The post Liberals pressed on PACA pledge for produce growers appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

She told Conservative trade critic Gerry Ritz in the Commons that the deal is not even open yet for ratification or a signature. A tentative agreement was reached among 12 countries during the Oct. 19 election campaign.

Trade experts have said the TPP deal, which hinges on U.S. congressional approval, likely won’t have to be approved until 2017.

The Liberal government supports free trade, Freeland said. “We understand that on a deal this big, it is essential to consult Canadians and have a full parliamentary debate.” The Liberals have yet to indicate how they plan to consult the public.

Ritz worked on the TPP negotiations as agriculture minister in the former government. He has called on Freeland “to stop stalling and sign the deal.” He has also criticized her for saying it’s not her job to promote the TPP deal.

Jacques Gourde, the Conservatives deputy agriculture critic, challenged Freeland to support a Conservative promise to compensate dairy and poultry farmers for economic losses the TPP might cause.

She replied that the Trudeau government is “committed to ensuring full transparency and having a full debate in Parliament. We will stand up for Canadian farmers.” She and Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay have personally assured farmers on trade issues.

Gourde accused the Liberals of “ignoring the problems facing farmers. The speech from the throne did not contain a single word, let alone a paragraph, about agriculture. The Liberals have banned the words agriculture, farmer and agri-food from their vocabulary.”

Freeland noted that MacAulay is a former potato farmer while her parents and grandparents were ranchers in Peace River, Alberta. “We are on the side of Canada’s producers. We are in their corner.”

Freeland heated up the TPP debate during a presentation on the trade deal during one of the seemingly endless string of academic and business discussions about it in Ottawa.

At that point, she said it was not her job to promote the deal, which basically is what the Liberals said during the election campaign.

Ritz accused Freeland of “showing an alarming lack of urgency to support Canadian business by ratifying the milestone TPP.

“An extended period of Liberal navel-gazing over the TPP, or over whether they support free trade at all, will do nothing to help the Canadian economy,” Ritz said.

The post Conservatives call on Liberals to move forward on TPP appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Other priorities include determining if farm aid programs are adequate, investing in infrastructure to protect soil and water and refocusing the government’s role in scientific research.

The Canadian Wheat Board is not coming back, but the Liberal government will dig into its apparent ‘giveaway’ to a foreign company and perhaps release the CWB’s 2012-13 annual report and financial statements that former agricuture minister Gerry Ritz kept secret.

• More on the Manitoba Co-operator: CWB sale to be scrutinized by new Liberal government

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet, including an agriculture minister, were to be sworn in Nov. 4 — two days after this week’s Manitoba Co-operator went to press.

Grain transportation is a priority, Goodale said in an interview last week, noting that a review of the Canadian Transportation Act led by former cabinet minister David Emerson is supposed to be done by the end of the year.

“This presents an opportunity for significant improvements in the system. It will be important to seize that opportunity to put in place a system that will not be prone to the kind of disaster that happened in 2013-14.”

Canada produced a record crop that year, but a backlog developed in railway grain shipments. Farmers and grain companies blamed the railways for not investing in enough surge capacity; the railways blamed the big crop and the coldest winter in 100 years.

Although the new government will consider Emerson’s recommendations, it’s on record as supporting subjecting the railways to commercial penalties for failing to fulfil service agreements with grain shippers. That’s just normal contractual law, Goodale said.

“This is the only case where it doesn’t apply,” he added. “What seems astounding is that the railways seem astounded when you say the basic principles of business and contract law should apply to them.”

It’s also time to calculate the railways’ costs of shipping grain — something last done in 1992, Goodale said. The formula used to set the railways’ maximum revenue entitlement is based on those 1992 costs, adjusted annually for inflation. However, it’s widely believed by farm groups that many railway costs have declined due to increased rail and grain-handling efficiency, resulting in farmers paying much more than intended.

“It is reasonable I think, to update the arithmetic,” Goodale said.

TPP review

The new government is also keen to review the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement before endorsing it.

While former minister Gerry Ritz was widely praised for his many trade missions to boost Canadian farm exports, Goodale isn’t impressed.

“The previous government seemed content to go from one trade negotiation to the other without a heck of a lot of followup,” he said.

“Once you’ve got the market access then you’ve got to make use of it and this government has not had a marketing or sales strategy. The end result is we’ve had 55 months of trade deficits under the Harper government.”

Ritz’s efforts lack the “pizzaz” of the Team Canada trade missions conducted by former Liberal government, according to Goodale.

The Conservative government cut farm program budgets and made it harder to trigger payments from AgriStability. Goodale said the new government will consult with farm groups and the provinces to see if the programs can meet farmers’ needs when commodity prices fall.

Some of the Liberal government’s infrastructure spending is intended for natural resources infrastructure, Goodale said.

“With the onset of more and more consequences from climate change we are very likely to have more frequent and more severe cycles of floods and droughts,” he said.

“The frustration is some years you have a flood and lack systems to control it or save it and then next year you have a drought.”

More basic research

The Liberals plan big changes to government scientific research, including in agriculture. There will be more basic, curiosity research, not just applied research tied to a commercial outcome, Goodale said.

“Science within the Government of Canada is totally messed up and the scientific community within the government is obviously muzzled and intimidated,” he said. “The whole thing needs to be examined from top to bottom to get science policy right.

“There’s a lot of work to do to repair the damage that has been done.”

Although the Liberals won a strong majority Oct. 19, outside of Atlantic Canada they have few rural seats. Asked how the new government will avoid becoming city-centric Goodale replied: “We’ll just have to work very hard at it.

“The prime-minister elect has made it very clear that he wants to be a prime minister for all of Canada and we’ll work very hard to achieve that.”

The post The Liberal government’s ‘to do’ list on agriculture appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.