Ontario sprouts election in the midst of planting season

Thursday, May 1, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

With the Ontario New Democratic Party saying today it won’t support the Liberal minority government’s budget, Ontario will be heading to the polls just as farmers are trying to finish planting.

Premier Kathleen Wynne announced this afternoon the election is on June 12.

Mark Wales, Ontario Federation of Agriculture president, says “it’s disappointing that we’re going to have an election campaign during planting time. We’re in a cold, late spring and that means it (the election) is going to be smack in that early to mid-June time period when farmers are going to be trying to wrap up planting.”

On Thursday, the Ontario government released a budget calling for $130.4 billion in spending. Farm leaders’ reaction to the budget was mixed while the Progressive Conservatives have said they will vote against it.

NDP agriculture critic John Vanthof says “we were incredibly disappointed with the budget” as it pertains to the agricultural industry.

Although Wynne, who is also the agriculture minister, challenged the agricultural sector last fall to double its growth rate and create 120,000 new jobs by 2020, Vanthof says she hasn’t given the industry any tools to meet that challenge. About the $40 million annually for the next 10 years for the food processing sector as part of the Jobs and Prosperity Fund announced in the budget, he says there were no details.

“We’ve given the premier the benefit of the doubt that as the premier of the province she had the ability to really move the sector forward and from our perspective she has completely failed on that,” he says.

Wynne says by email sent by her agriculture ministry spokesman, Mark Cripps, that by voting against the 2014 budget, the NDP and PCs are saying “no to the progress that has positioned Ontario’s agri-food sector for success.”

She adds that she is “disappointed both parties are indicating they will not support our budget. They are putting their own political interests ahead of the progress we are making to position our agri-food sector as one of the key drivers of our economy.”

Despite the inconvenient timing of the election for farmers, Wales says the federation is prepared. “We’re ready to go and we’ve prepared a lot of election material,” Wales says. “We’ve prepared a lot questions to go to all candidates in all ridings so we’re going to be talking to urban candidates as well.”

Wales says what the federation is looking for from the political parties includes: a commitment and plan to extend natural gas infrastructure to rural Ontario, improvements to the farm property tax system and funding for infrastructure in rural municipalities.

Increased funding for the risk management program is also high on the agenda.

That program needs to go back to being funded “based on program design,” he says. Currently there is a $100 million cap but the amount needed in any given year varies with “one year $100 million might be enough, while another year it might take $200 million and another year it might be $122 million,” he says. BF