Canada

NFU tackles Tory agri-business policy

The National Farmers Union kicks off
the new decade in Regina, holding its 20th
annual convention Jan. 11-14. Wayne
Easter, a PEI potato farmer, is seeking an
eighth term as president, challenged by
Alberta’s Art Macklin, the current vice-
president.

The overriding issue however, is
expected to be the organization’s response

_ to the new federal farm policy recently
issued in a green paper titled, “Growing
Together: A Vision For Canada’s Agri-
Food Industry.”

“Growing Together” is a slick 74-page
booklet with many parallels to the Liber-
als’ 1969 federal task force report on agri-
culture. Both pay lip service to the
importance of the family farm, while
advancing interests of the corporate sector
in the food industry.

During the 20 years since the 1969
report, the number of Canadian farms has
dropped from 430,000 to below 300,000.
The latest Statistics Canada projections on
farm income indicate that trend may
accelerate.

During 1987-89, the total “realized net
income” (gross revenues minus operating
costs and depreciation) averaged $4.7 bil-
lion annually, but will fall to about $2.6
billion this year. For the first time since
1933, Saskatchewan farmers’ realized net
income will drop below zero, to a pro-
jected total loss of $9 million.

With a selective use of statistics, “Grow-
ing Together” glosses over this reality.
Instead, it’s filled with the favourite buzz-
words of Agriculture Minister Don
Mazankowski. His “vision of the future”
is a “more market-oriented agri-food
industry ...a more self reliant sector able
to earn a reasonable return from the mar-
ketplace .. . (with) national policies recog-
nizing and responding to regional diver-
sity,” and a seeming after-thought,

“environmentally sustainable” agriculture
for future generations.

Farmers across the country are showing
signs of rejecting the Tory plan, summed
up in the green paper. Over 5,000, led by
L’Union des Producteurs Agricoles du
Quebec, including many members of the
Ontario Federation of Agriculture,
marched on Parliament Hill Nov. 21 to
defend supply management programs and
other policies under fire from the Free
Trade Agreement.

In Saskatchewan, a spirited campaign
against foreclosures has drawn thousands
to meetings since October. One goal of the

the reordering of the lives of farm people.”

A number of policy changes dictated by
the FTA have already been implemented,
the NFU critique notes. These include:
removal of the two-price wheat system;
removal of oats from the Canadian Wheat
Board jurisdiction; increased import quo-
tas for chickens and eggs; elimination of
interest-free cash advances on crops;
reduction of inspection of meat imported
from the U.S.; cancellation of the branch-
line rehabilitation program; and much
more.

All the programs were designed to help
Canadian farmers compete against their

Kimball Cariou

campaign is to boycott sales of foreclosed
land, and it has bankers here worried.

A number of groups have expressed
concerns about the “Growing Together”
document, which was a centrepiece of a
major farm conference called by the
Tories in Ottawa last month. But the NFU
has put together to sharpest critique of the
green paper, as well as a solid alternative
program.

It stresses that “Growing Together”
moves in the same direction as the 1969
task force. Today, the FTA “serves as an
additional catalyst for the further indus-
trialization of food production, the res-
tructuring of the agri-food industry and

FROM SASKATCHEWAN

U.S. counterparts operating in more
favorable conditions. Together with other
mechanisms to defend farmers against
agribusiness, they are being swiftly elimi-
nated as required by the FTA.

In devastating detail, the NFU paper
shreds the green paper’s underlying
assumptions, such as the “equal relation-
ship” between farmers and big business,
and that farmers can prosper by becoming
“more efficient risk managers.”

“Growing Together,” it concludes, sig-
nals the government’s intention to
“transfer greater power over production,
pricing, and marketing of farm products,
and control of resources and farmers

themselves, into the hands of the corpo-
rate planning sectors.” ;

Rejecting that subservient role in the
industry, the NFU lays out its own vision,
based on “broad positive concepts” such
as solving human problems of malnutri-
tion and poverty, building strong rural
communities and farm organizations and
government responsibility to defend farm-
ers.

In some detail, the paper outlines the
policies to make these concepts a reality:
ways to achieve an affordable land base, to
reduce farm debt, to control input costs, to
advance towards environmentally sound
agriculture, and to diversify production
are all addressed.

The program also calls for improved
marketing systems, scapping the FTA,
strenghtening Article XI of GATT (which
allows supply management programs),
and providing farmers with “fair prices
that beara relationship to costs of produc-
tion.”

A strong point of the paper is its expo-
sure to the fallacy that “the market” will
somehow provide farmers with fair prices
if left to operate unimpeded — an impos-
sibility in a system where farmers are the
“weakest link in the food chain” which
also includes giant multinational corpora-
tions.

Clearly 1990 will be a critical year for
Canada’s farmers. As the country slides
into a recession, the farm population may
be among the hardest hit victims. The
National Farmers Union, with its clear
perspective on the corporate attack, its
alternative programs, and its strong com-
mitment to farmer-labour alliances and to
broad coalitions, will be a critical factor in
the fight. The convention in Regina is
likely to be an important challenge to the
organization, which now faces perhaps the
most important struggle in its history.

International affairs debate continues in CLC

By MARC YOUNG
Long standing tensions between the

_ Ontario Federation of Labour and the
_ leadership of the Canadian Labour Con-
_ gress over international policy, expressed
recently in resolutions at the OFL conven-
tion, have been played out over the last

several weeks in a, flow of documents,

~ around the country.
According to a
_ CLC spokesperson,
the matter was also
likely to arise at an

executive committee’
meeting that was
ed for Jan.

The latest round
_ of discord was set
off when the OFL’s

1 subcommittee on-
_ International affairs

: presented a short paper at the September .

_ CLC executive council meeting, arguing
that the Congress’ international affairs
_ department spends more time importing
_ policy from the International Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions than taking good
POsitions.

“We watch through the eyes of Canadian
workers,” argues the OFL paper. “We
_ watch as Canadian social democrats; we
_ apply our unique perspective to interna-
_ tional events. Very often though, we are
_ Surprised by the reaction of Canadian
_ Labour Congress to these world events.
_ Sometimes it seems that there is a ‘made in

_ Brussels’ (headquarters of the ICFTU) line.
___ “It sometimes seems that the role of our
_ CLC international affairs department is to
_ disseminate the ICFTU view into Canada,

rather than to reflect the Canadian worker’s
views out to the world.”
The document bemoans the fact that

over the years the OFL has felt obliged to

shun representatives of assorted progressive
bodies in deference to the CLC stance.

South Africa, El Salvador, and Britain’s
striking miners are all cited as subjects that
have provoked differences between the two
organizations.

“Over the years, various affiliates, as well
as the OFL, were given confusing directives
about the South African struggle ... What
seemed a useful and simple decision to work
with SACTU (South African Congress of
Trade Unions) representatives (though not
exclusively) was somehow transformed into
intrigue, veiled innuendos about commu-
nism, charges of naivete on our part, and on
and on ...,” it notes.

“At many OFL conventions we have
found ourselves in a position where the
OFL executive board would not recognize
SACTU representatives (in deference to
CLC wishes), at the same time as delegates

were demanding recognition of the group

they knew best on the issue of South
Africa — SACTU — an untenable situa-
tion.”

The decision to refuse a delegation of
British Mineworkers their request to
address a convention, “in deference to CLC
wishes,” is described as “unforgettable,”
and the experience of hanging a similar ver-
dict on a Salvadoran trade unionist is men-
tioned.

The CLC has also come in for criticism
for its embrace of the Israeli trade union
movement to the exclusion of Palestinian
workers struggling for trade union and
national rights in the Gaza strip and West

Bank.

And last year, the OFL and president
Gord Wilson dismissed CLC worries and
sent a union delegation to Nicaragua to
celebrate the 10th anniversary of the revolu-
tion.

The Congress, for its part, replied with a
letter, dated Nov. 21, signed by president
Shirley Carr and-Rick Jackson and sent to
members of the executive committee. They
dismiss the claim that close ties with the
ICFTU weaken or ‘de-Canadianize’ CLC
positions, and attempt to refute the inci-
dents cited by the OFL.

The Congress paper declares respect for
SACTU as an “important consciousness
raising organization,” but argues that the
CLC’s “‘ ‘partners’ in South Africa are the
trade union organizations organized and
headquartered there.”

“Confusion” remains, argue the authors,
because certain unions push SACTU,
implicitly to the exclusion of labour unions
inside the Republic of South Africa.

Carr and Jackson explain a decision to
channel assistance to the striking British
miners through the TUC rather than their
union, but don’t seem to come to grips with
the particular charges regarding those
organizations raised in the OFL letter.

Nor do they attempt to explain the CLC’s
cold shoulder to the FSLN-led government
of Nicaragua, which the OFL committee
ascribes to the revolutionary regime’s
absence from the Socialist International.

The CLC letter also dismisses the cold
war as a cause of the rupture with trade
unions affiliated to the World Federation of
Trade Unions, citing the desire for auto-
nomous worker organizations as the sole
reason for the establishment of the ICFTU.

Among the recommendations for a
revamping of international policy pushed
by the OFL are calls for federation conven-
tions to feature speakers and guests decided
on by provincial executive boards —
“While we may ask the CLC for assistance,
we expect the CLC to facilitate our wishes,
not vice versa” — and an insistence that
Canadian trade unions act to balance the
foreign policy views of U.S. trade unions
“who often reflect or are restricted by their

-government’s foreign policy, which hurts
many workers.”

Observers have noted that the CLC-OFL
disagreement is liable to spark some sharp
debate at the Congress convention this year
in Winnipeg.

Pact possibility
in UMWA strike

_ After 270 days of striking, 17,000 Pittston
miners may be returning to work. Federal
mediation between the United Mine
Workers of America and the coal group has
reportedly produced a tentative agreement.

But no one is declaring victory yet, prim-
arily because strikers still have no idea what
the proposed contract contains. According
to the New York Times, the union hopes to
unveil the package to the rank and file after
fines and lawsuits aimed at the workers dur-
ing the long battle are resolved.

The next couple of weeks will reveal
whether there’s an end to or merely a brief
respite from one of the greatest U.S. labour
struggles of the century.

Pacific Tribune, January 15, 1990 « 7