Top-ups to the cash advance and AgriStability programs for farmers are nice, but they don’t go far enough in mitigating the impact of China’s retaliatory tariffs against Canadian agricultural exports, according to the executive director of Grain Growers of Canada.
“What producers are looking for — this is what I’m hearing from most grain farmers across the country — is they’re looking for a new program that would deliver dollars directly to them to compensate them for the losses that have been incurred because of the Government of Canada’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and steel and aluminum,” says Kyle Larkin, in the interview below, discussing Grain Growers’ priorities during the federal election campaign.
Without going into specifics about how a new program would work, Larkin says he told new Agriculture Minister Kody Blois in a meeting last week that the government showed it has capacity to quickly launch support programs for Canadians during in the response to the COVID pandemic.
“This isn’t new territory that we’re in. The government has the capability of launching programs at a whim,” he says. “The unfortunate piece is that obviously the government is in a caretaker mode right now because of the election…but we’re still pushing them to say that farmers need to be fully compensated for the loss that the government has caused them.”
Grain Growers has launched a campaign, including a website and click-and-send tool, to help farmers contact candidates during the election at VoteforGrain.ca. The campaign focuses on three key priorities, notes Larkin:
“Number one is the trade uncertainty. Number two is the carbon tax, and number three is the capital gains tax increase. And the reason we’re still lobbying on the carbon tax and the capital gains tax increase is because we still don’t have clarity on both of those issues,” he says.
Check out our discussion with Kyle Larkin for more on what Grain Growers’ is hoping to hear during the federal election campaign, compensation for China’s tariffs, and more!
Related: Canadian government should compensate farmers for losses due to Chinese tariffs: farm groups
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | All Podcasts
