No thanks, we're diplomats

In the weeks that followed the latest incident, in which an Ottawa lawyer was killed, many Canadians expressed outrage at the freedom foreign diplomats have to commit crimes in Canada without facing Canadian justice.

Not a word, however, about Canadian diplomats -- specifically Canadian diplomats who break Canadian laws in Canada. Faithful readers will recall the story in the August/ September issue of Better Farming about former diplomat Graham N. Green, He not only claimed to have smuggled sausage into Canada for almost a decade, but wrote a column boasting about it for the Ottawa Citizen.

Last fall, at a press conference at Canada's Outdoor Farm Show, agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief introduced Wally, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's (CFIA) latest detector dog. Wally and his CFIA colleagues, both human and canine, are on the front lines at airports. They are supposed to ensure that meats which could carry disease don't get into our country. Some sausage-borne diseases could cripple the Canadian swine industry. Other meats which people like Green might smuggle could bring diseases more harmful to humans. One example would be Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE) which has been linked to widespread panic and deaths in Europe.

There was no mention of diplomatic immunity at Wally's debut. Questions on the issue from BetterFarming were referred to CFIA communication officers in Ottawa. After repeated calls over the past six months, we were eventually told that CFIA has no information about Green's actions, nor about any possible RCMP investigation into his actions, beyond what the department learned from the original Better Farming article. Requests for statistics or for information about any other diplomats who may have smuggled were referred to the external affairs department.

CFIA's "blind eye" approach may serve Green and fellow diplomats well, but BSE may have raised the stakes. The agency is coming under increasing scrutiny from the public. The Canadian Health Coalition, an Ottawa-based lobby group, wants more done to keep BSE out of Canada. Chairwoman Kathleen Connors recently fired off a letter to Health Minister Alan Rock, accusing his department and CFIA of taking a "blind approach" to protecting Canadians from BSE. Connors wants an increase in testing and inspections and ban on vaccines containing bovine material.

The letter makes no mention of diplomats.

What's the Health Canada beef?

One Friday in February, the Globe and Mail's front page dumped all over the federal government for banning Brazilian beef a week before. Health Canada scientists charged that department managers at Health Canada made the decision without consulting them. It was political, "a ruse," and linked to an ongoing trade dispute with Brazil over subsidies to each nation's airplane industries, Health Canada scientists charge.

By the end of the day Canada's Brazilian beef ban had unraveled. Major export industries, such as telecommunications giant Nortel, were telling Ottawa to back off. Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials were packing their bags to fly off to Brasilia, apparently to confirm that everything down there was hunky-dory after all.

Back to those Health Canada scientists. There's just one small problem. The decision to ban Brazilian beef imports wasn't made by Health Canada at all. It was the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that took the step of suspending Brazilian beef imports. The CFIA operates under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a separate federal department, for those who don't know.

Furthermore, the decision to ban Brazilian beef imports was made at the same time by the United States Food and Drug Administration. The USDA isn't known for paying much attention to political pressure coming from Ottawa and neither is Mexico, which made the same decision to ban Brazilian beef.

Alisa Harrison, executive director of public relations for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association confirmed that the United States had stopped Brazilian imports because of that government's failure to prove it could trace European cattle which it had imported from Europe as recently as 1999. The United States imports about 41,000 tonnes of cooked and canned beef (four per cent of total imports) from Brazil every year. There are no chilled or frozen beef imports allowed from Brazil into Mexico, the United States or Canada because Brazil isn't free of foot and mouth disease. Brazil exports about 2.36 million kg of beef to Canada every year.

The Canadian Cattlemen's Association continues to support the ban imposed by the CFIA, confirmed Cindy McCreath, communications manager. And even though the Brazilian government is screaming that the ban on its beef is unfair, she understands that the temporary ban on its beef appears to have brought about a desired effect. Brazil was finally completing the paperwork on the traceability of imported cattle that Canada first sought two years ago. "Brazil, for some reason, didn't think it was that important," McCreath said.

All this leaves careful readers wondering what the Health Canada scientist's complaints in the Globe and Mail are about. One scientist was unnamed; the other one was Margaret Haydon, an outspoken opponent of the registration of rBST for dairy cattle when Monsanto was still trying to have that product approved for use in Canada. She had carved out a reputation as a whistleblower, and apparently her comments still carry weight with the press in Ottawa. A Globe and Mail on-line poll carried on that day garnered 2,670 respondents. Almost three-quarters of them indicated a belief that Brazilian beef was banned for political reasons, not because of food safety concerns.

More "rural" than "agriculture"

Farmers can only hope that the new provincial minister, Brian Coburn, is more successful than his predecessor in promoting agriculture's agenda. A number of initiatives that failed to advance during Ernie Hardeman's 18 month term were left hanging when Premier Mike Harris relegated the Oxford County MPP and former feed mill owner to the back benches last month.

It goes without saying that fighting for support for hard-pressed farmers is at the top of Coburn's agenda. Not far behind, and perhaps more of a minefield, is a new Agricultural Standards Act. New legislation dealing with the spreading of livestock manure was ready to be launched last spring when the Walkerton tragedy broke.

Also important is a proposal from more than a year ago to refurbish the Ontario Drainage Act and to change the funding for tile drainage. Industry consultations were wrapped up about this time last year. Proposed changes have languished for months on a desk somewhere in OMAFRA headquarters at One Stone Road in Guelph, waiting for the minister's attention.

Also facing Coburn will be a provincial policy statement review, which could have profound effects upon agriculture. And then there is a proposed revamping of food inspection legislation in Ontario. Last month the province was still consulting with the stakeholders on these changes.

The reasons for Hardeman's departure are varied. Certainly the urban media were not impressed. On the day that Coburn's appointment was announced, the Ottawa Citizen said Hardeman's stock fell in the Mike Harris cabinet last spring because of the Walkerton debacle. The agriculture minister was apparently quoted in the media as saying that manure was a useful nutrient at the same time as Walkerton residents were dying from E. coli in their water. There was also a tinge of fiscal irresponsibility associated with the debt that Agricorp ran up while Hardeman was minister and supposedly an overseer.

Finally, there are stories that Hardeman was perceived as always asking for money at the cabinet table. On the other side, farmers still haven't forgiven Hardemen for closing county agriculture offices across the province last spring.

Coburn appears to be more connected to the rural than the agriculture side of his new ministry. He grew up on a farm in the Ottawa-Carleton Region, launched and ran a couple of small businesses, then spent 10 years as mayor of Cumberland as the fast-growing township became a city. There, Coburn's goals were to keep city hall accessible to taxpayers and to control spending. Apparently the city was debt free when he left.

In June, 1999, Coburn was elected to the Ontario Legislature as the member for Ottawa-Orléans. He was subsequently appointed by Premier Harris as Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and was the point man taking the flack as municipal amalgamation was pushed across the province.

Landowners at Risk

The Species At Risk legislation is back in Ottawa, and landowners are unimpressed.

According to Renfrew County cattleman Bob Dobson, co-chair of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association's environment committee, the compensation that has been proposed is inadequate and it won't start soon enough. Furthermore, details are scanty and the devil is in the details.

Here are the basics of the formula: If an endangered species sets up housekeeping on a farmers' property some of the farm property would be designated as off-limits for farming activities under the proposed new law. The bill sets a threshold of a 10 per cent before the farmer gets a penny in compensation. But Dobson says it is unclear whether the 10 per cent loss is measured in terms of acres taken out of cropping, a 10 per cent loss in gross income, or the same loss measured in net income.

Dobson says there should be a threshold, but 10 per cent of anything is too high.

And the farmer won't get a penny more than 50 per cent of his losses in compensation.

The bottom line, says Dobson, is that the proposed compensation is far less than what farmers were led to believe before by Federal Environment Minister Dave Anderson. And this apparent change in direction worries Dobson.

In terms of the estimated costs of the program, he says, "They may know more than we in the agricultural community know. If that is so, I would be concerned. If it's going to cost them too much money, it is going to cost us too much money." BF

Willie Nelson versus the check-off

Early last month as one of his last duties in office, former agriculture secretary Dan Glickman cancelled the mandatory producer check-off, which used 45 cents of every $100 earned from a producer's hog sales to support the $48 million promotion program. The check-off raised about $54 million, part of which supported the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), while 20 per cent was funneled to state pork associations for investment in state-directed promotion, consumer education and research programs.

Nelson, president of Farm Aid, which has used fundraising concerts since 1986 to promote the plight of family farms, insists "the pork check-off was always about the big guys swallowing up the little guys." Farm Aid, which has doled out nearly $16 million to more than 100 farm organizations, provided financial support for a drive which obtained more than 19,000 signatures opposing the check-off. That triggered a producer referendum in which farmers voted 15,951 to 14,396 against the program.

Many questions have been raised about the validity of the original petition as well as the legitimacy of the referendum. NPPC along with an assortment of producers and producer groups has turned to the courts to overturn Glickman's decision.

USDA has also received a petition calling for an end to the beef check-off. Many other agricultural commodities including milk, and dairy products are involved in check-off programs.BF