Minister no longer in denial

The Honourable Lyle Vanclief has handled the grain and oil seed crisis as a man who has been told he has a terminal illness. First, he went into denial. A year and a half ago in Belleville he told Ontario farmers they were not using the safety nets they already had in place. Things were not so bad.

Then he turned to despair. Even though, the Liberal Government was rolling towards a $10 billion surplus and paying out gobs of money with no accountability faster than you could say Shawinigan, he told farmers Canada couldn’t compete with the U.S. treasury. Woe to us.

Nobody was asking him to compete with the U.S. Farm organizations were asking for enough money to take them through the distortion in world markets caused by U.S. and European subsidies. The U.S. is paying out (U.S.) $17.1 billion annually but Canadian farmers would have been happy with $200 million more.

Two months ago, Vanclief went to Washington. The secretary of agriculture, Ann Veneman, did not meet with him while one newspaper told him he was meddling in U.S. politics.

Rebuffed, he turned to anger, telling a reporter with the Belleville Intelligencer he would go toe to toe with President Bush. We don’t know how he was going to go toe to toe. But it’s probably not with more money, nor with a media blitz. The Intelligencer doesn’t have the readership of the New York Times.

When asked about more funding in a conference call with reporters, he sounded like our wartime prime minister who said conscription but not necessarily conscription. Vanclief said maybe there’ll be more money and maybe there won’t. Reality was beginning to rear its head.

Soon Canada could face up to the problems of the global economy. What a relief that would be. Unfortunately, the federal government has no vision for agriculture, though the minister has come up with five abstract cornerstones. We call them the five pillars of piffle.