CALGARY, AB: With the Conservative Party of Canada Leadership selection underway, the Western Canadian Wheat Growers have surveyed the approved candidates regarding their position on seven specific agriculture policies.
The questions are:
1. As the next leader of the CPC, what would your top priorities be for farmers and the agriculture industry across the prairies?
2. What is your position on free and competitive markets in international trade, including the elimination of export subsidies, reduction of trade-distorting domestic support, and reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers that inhibit market access?
3. What is your position on a carbon pricing system, including a credit and debit system that acknowledges the significant carbon reductions being achieved by prairie grain farmers through modern farming techniques and carbon sequestering?
4. Farmers depend on road and rail infrastructure to bring in crop inputs and export grain. What is your position on the grain transportation system and the ability to maintain an accountable and efficient system considering possible future overcrowding on the rail system? How will you support rural infrastructure investment?
5. What is your position on the development of agricultural innovations that make farmers more profitable and sustainable, with a science-based regulatory approval process for the introduction of new technologies, including the adoption of genetically modified crops?
6. The current government’s approach to agriculture policy is following the European Commission’s Farm To Fork strategy. Do you support this approach, including a reduction in fertilizer emissions, even at the expense of grain production?
7. Supply Management has created many international trade challenges. Do you have a plan to phase out this program and bring free market conditions to all components of agriculture?
The responses are available here.
If non-responsive candidates submit their answers, the website will be updated.
About the Wheat Growers:
Founded in 1970, the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association is a voluntary farmer-run advocacy organization dedicated to developing public policy solutions that strengthen the profitability and sustainability of farming, and the agricultural industry as a whole. For more information please visit: wheatgrowers.ca. Click here to see who is helping to advocate for grain farmers.
For More Information Contact:
Dave Quist, Executive Director
587-224-7221
dquist@wheatgrowers.ca