When tractors hit the road and farmers demonstrated in Ottawa, the government sprung money loose but there was never a comprehensive program that worked. Canada came up with the five pillars of piffle to provide environmental controls and provide a stable income for farmers. What is called the CAIS program appeared to have some value for beef farmers but many cattlemen with incomes below pre-BSE levels aren’t able to collect. As bad, it isn’t able to offset low prices caused by subsidized corn and oils in the U.S.

For years, farm organizations have tried to woo politicians. Many farmers in eastern Ontario will remember spending time and money setting up a succulent meal of Canadian-produced food for parliamentarians and their hangers-on. Surely these tactics would work, they believed. But they didn’t.

There was never a vision, as there is in the United States, that would keep Canada, the third largest food exporter in the world, competitive in the world. Only the province of Quebec showed leadership.

Now we know why. The Liberal government was willing to let agriculture deteriorate because it had no intention of including it in the future prosperity of the country. Canada’s Minister of International Trade, Jim Peterson, said at a press conference in Hong Kong that he was willing to sacrifice supply management on the World Trade Organization’s altar of globalization.

In Hong Kong last month, in a shocking performance for Canadians, Peterson let the cat out of the bag. He said that suffering and pain among Canadian farmers was worth the pot of gold at the end of the free trade rainbow.

And what is held in that pot of gold? It holds access to global markets for banks and insurance companies, increased profits of global companies, depressed prices for food so consumers can grow obese at low costs. It holds help for Nortel and Bombardier, and Power Corporation, for which the last two prime ministers were connected. It means prosperity for the Paul Martin family-owned Canadian Steamship Lines, which will carry our food from distant waters.

But it doesn’t hold anything for Canadian farmers, except more lies. You are free to vote for the party in power in this election. In the words of a former federal minister of agriculture: "If you haven’t suffered enough, it is your God given right to suffer some more."