Election 2011 - What do each of the party's have planned for agriculture?

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Permalink Reply by Phil Mount on April 28, 2011 at 3:33am

Actually, the CFA have done nothing of the kind. Some of the columns seem to spell out party platforms quite clearly, while others are missing altogether. This applies to all parties for specific issues, but the column that made me suspicious was for the 'Greens': only 4 positions listed out of a total of 17 headings! Now, I'm not voting for the Green Party, but I had to imagine that they had something to say about agriculture.

So I took a look at the Green Party Platform by following the link that the CFA put at the bottom of their Platform Comparison Table... and in short order easily found policies explicitly dealing with each of the headings except "Young Farmers". Some of those policies are almost identical to planks from other parties - they weren't hard to spot.

Now, I'm a naturally suspicious and cynical person, so I contacted the CFA 10 days ago, and even included the results of my search, helpfully listed by heading, for someone to cut and paste into the chart on the website. Even if they were equally suspicious (and they should be, in their position), it would have taken two minutes to check that these positions were in fact listed in the Green Party Platform.

Jessica Goodfellow, Director of Communications at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, has insisted that "Yes, certainly the chart is meant to be helpful to CFA members. If we missed parts, we apologize." 

Well, an apology only cuts it for so long. Given that she said this 10 days ago, the election is now only 4 days away, and the chart remains unchanged, the only conclusion is that the objective of the chart is not actually to help CFA members compare party platforms. Which is a shame, because it seemed like the CFA were doing something useful. Do annual payments go towards the CFA trying to influence the voting practices of its own membership?

Phil Mount,

Guelph, Ontario

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Permalink Reply by Joann on April 29, 2011 at 2:39am

Canada has an entrenched Soverign food security law with entrenched domestic marketing rights and obligations.

 

Not one party has acknowledged those facts.

 

Not one party will acknowledge that domestic farmers have rights, duties and obligations to the domestic peoples which are entrenched in our Constitution.

 

Not one party speaks to entrenched "property" rights.

 

If the different parties will not acknowledge publicly the entrenched foundational rights of our country to protect the public in regards to all things "of" the soil, then all other matters will become inconsequential.

 

Matters of agriculture must not be esoteric. 

 

All Sovereign licenses to trade and sovereign licenses to production must be brought forward for public acknowledgment.

 

How many are there and who has them?

 

Once we understand the very foundation of agriculture, then and only then can we effectively move forward with meaningful policy.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Dales on May 1, 2011 at 5:45am

I hope everyone takes time to vote.
Unfortunately with only 2 percent of the voters involved in agriculture, we don't appear to be very important to the politicians.
We need to do what we can to play our part in this election.

Joe

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