This morning when I woke up, I merrily marched to my computer to see the morning's news headlines. When I saw "Liberals outline national food policy", I was immediately reminded of the policies of Chairman Mao and that Great Leap Forward to revamp China's agricultural system left millions of people dead of starvation. Okay, so what Iggy proposed today isn't exactly a Great Leap Forward, but more of a Mediocre Stumble Sideways. He is not proposing the complete overhaul of Canadian agriculture, but rather he wants to spend $80 million dollars encouraging rural people to eat rural food.
Of all the friends and family that I have in rural Canada, I have observed that most of them eat primarily locally produced food already. What kind of sponsorship program is Iggy going to build around the promotion of rural food consumption? Buying flags and billboards to encourage national spirit? Look if he is really concerned about bettering the lives of farmers, encouraging local consumption will have only a marginal effect if any. The best thing to help rural farmers is to work to open up more export markets to large urban centers.
Oh and the best part, he's going to pay for this program (like all his billions in spending promises) with freezed corporate tax cuts. Right, tax cuts that haven't happened yet. He's offering to spend money that doesn't exist while also saying that he will dramatically reduce the deficit in 2 years. You can't square that circle.
'I have observed that most of them eat primarily locally produced food already.'
ReplyDeleteI grow my own vegetables and potatoes. I like many of us don't have the Cordon Bleu and caviar taste like the CBC and liberals have. I guess also from Ignatieff point of view is that spending money outside of canada for variety of foods is a waste of money on us when the liberals can use that money on themselves and friends.
How many vacation villas does Ignatieff have outside of Canada?
Listen Ignatieff, you see to your books while us peasants look after ourselves. The liberals still owe us peasants millions of dollars and so far LBC has no intentions of getting it from you.
"he wants to spend $80 million dollars encouraging rural people to eat rural food"
ReplyDeleteNo, no , no, Iceman. What he wants to do is spend $80 million telling all those incredibly smart people who live in cities (and vote Liberal) to buy more food produced by "rural people" (aka peasants, serfs, peons, etc.) instead of buying strawberries in January from South America or whatever.
This will benefit "rural people" because instead of selling their produce to people who are sensible enough to know that this is a "good thing", they will now sell it all to those people who are so dumb they have to be told it's a good thing. And tick off all their current customers who will now not be able to find local produce they can afford.
Sorry Jad, my source was Jane Taber and she was not very descriptive. My bad for citing her as a source.
ReplyDelete"Mr. Ignatieff’s latest rural policy, meanwhile, includes an $80-million Buy Local Fund “to promote farmers markets and home-grown foods.”"
I understood buy local to be buying where it is produced. Most of our food is produced in rural Canada.
You would think Liberals would not want to revisit the subject matter of advertising.
ReplyDeleteHe could start by voting with the government to allow western Canadian farmers the freedom to sell their wheat to whoever they want, not the CWB.
ReplyDeleteThen he could vote to get rid of supply management that benefits producers and causes consumers to pay twice as much as if we imported our milk and cheese in from the US.
Then he could go after all the processors who add chemicals to preserve their products and sell them in the frozen food section.
That would be a good start.
No wonder this University lecturer never made Professor. He is intellectually challenged.
ReplyDeleteYa well, just look at WHO is the Liberal Ag critic, Wayne Easter and then this policy speaks for itself, imo.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.liberal.ca/en/team/critics
Actually, don't look...THEY ARE ALL HARD to visualize giving a rats pitewee about anything truly Canadian.
Liberals.......The Culture Of Replete.
ReplyDeleteSo I see that the G&M dirt bags are conveniently providing links to the Liberal Party site. How touching!! The G&M know that if they get this gaggle of slimball crooked Liberals back in power, they’ll be well rewarded with the Liberals confiscating our money and handing it over to the Toronto Pravdinian media.
ReplyDelete“Rural Canada Matters”
ReplyDeleteWhat gliberal half wit named this program?
What an insulting, pandering, demeaning and childish name. Anyone with half a brain would see it as “Rural Canada Matters NOT”.
They sure are good at talking down to people, we got thank those dumb asses for that!
The only detail that has been given is that 40 million will be spent on farmers markets. If they were actually going to expand the number of markets and do upgrades on existing ones, this would be a good thing in my view.
ReplyDeleteAny time farmers can access greater markets and cut out all the hands in between that take a piece before a customer buys it at the grocery store, that is a benefit to farmers. There are many other vendors at farmers markets as well, and the "city folk" who frequent them are used to spending on pricey items, so this gives rural people a very good place to make some money.
This is about the only thing I have heard Ignatieff say which I think has merit.