Premier/ag minister talks about agriculture and Ontario's new budget

Thursday, May 2, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

Ontario’s government is focused on ensuring farm communities can flourish because they’re such an important part of the province’s economy, says Premier and Agriculture Minister Kathleen Wynne.

Wynne, the MPP for Don Valley West in Toronto, says that since 2010 when she was transportation minister she has been very concerned about small municipalities’ ability to pay for their infrastructure through their tax base. “I’ve been very much an advocate for a dedicated infrastructure fund for roads and bridges.”

And that’s why her government included in its budget a fund of $100 million for rural municipalities’ infrastructure projects that they can start getting as of October. “We’re going to work to make that a permanent fund.”

As for her government’s recommitment to the provincial business risk management program, Wynne says she knows how important the program is to the industry. “It’s one of the those programs that really supports the agri-food industry and recognizes the risks the farm community faces, whether it’s weather, climate change or economic markets. It’s important that we have that support in place.”

Also in the budget is $30 million over three years for local food initiatives. “We’ve heard consistently from the agri-food community that we need to more as a government to support local food and the buying of local food,” she says, noting that fund is earmarked to support programs to help better educate consumers, provide for innovation and help support the local food industry.

In response to Progressive Conservative agriculture critic Ernie Hardeman, who says he’s concerned the budget didn’t contain any measures to reduce hydro costs or regulatory red tape for farmers, Wynne says there’s a lot work going on within the government “that doesn’t necessarily show up in the budget. We already have an open for business process that farmers are part of” to address red tape.

About how her job as agriculture minister is going, Wynne says it dovetails well with her role as premier. Recently she met with the organization representing Ontario’s small and urban municipalities. “There’s so much overlap between the needs of small municipalities and the agriculture community,” she says.

One concern Wynne has was the length of time, almost four months, it took for the Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal to release the reasons for denying reaccreditation to the National Farmers Union in Ontario. “It’s not acceptable that it would take so long and we had to push so hard to get the reasons released,” she says. “It’s certainly something I’m going to be looking at and I hope that we will be able to work to improve that process in the future.” BF