Blaine Pedersen, Manitoba’s Minister of Agriculture and Resource Development, tweeted proudly on March 25, “Just finished a productive FPT meeting, [meetings of federal, provincial and territorial ministers of agriculture]. Manitoba has agreed to remove the reference margin limit which will be retroactive for 2020.” 
The ministers moved the deadline for enrollment to June 30, 2021. Great day for Manitoba producers. 
Federal ag minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said on March 25, “We’ve received the support from all our provincial and territorial colleagues on the removal of the RML from #AgriStability, retroactive to 2020! It’s a big win for farmers across Canada, about $95 million a year. “Thank you to all farmers and producer groups who got behind our offer.” 
The Canadian pork producers quickly responded, saying in a release how disappointing the outcome of the FPT Ministers of agriculture is.  
The Canadian Pork Council, representing over 7,000 pork producers from coast to coast, acknowledge the Ministers’ efforts to meet and discuss AgriStability but are highly disappointed they could not reach a consensus on Minister Bibeau’s proposal to improve payment rates. 
“We know AgriStability negotiations are not easy, but removing the reference margin limit does very little for pork producers,” said chair Rick Bergmann. “We expected that, in these difficult times, the prairie provincial ministers would have considered the challenges faced by pork producers.” 
Over the last 12 months, pork producers in every province have faced extreme price fluctuations, border closures, and processing plant shutdowns. Fortunately, some producers weathered the storm, but others must now struggle with a program that could work better if the ministers had agreed to changes. 
When a tweeter asked former ag minister Gerry Ritz whether anything had changed, he said, “Not really!”   
“I think he’s elated because it’s not going to cost the province a whole lot of money. They’ve fuzzed around the edges, but they didn’t come up with what farm groups were calling for and move that reference margin back up to where it was years ago.”  
When his administration lowered it some years back, it was at the direction of several provinces that saw the extra dollars they would need to spend. Farmer groups complained it wasn’t timely in that it took a year to garner the income tax records and so on.  
Ritz couldn’t find the details, and at one point Minister Bibeau talked about $175 million of federal money on the table. Now it’s $95 million, so somewhere $75 million went missing.  
“I see a lot of farmers commenting on Twitter — okay, what does this mean for me? And a few have tried to explain it, but I think the details are still kind of foggy in a lot of people’s minds.” 

His concern about the lack of changes to farm safety nets is that the carbon tax offsets any gain. Until Bibeau finally starts to recognize all of the fuels and all of the carbon taxes that accrue at the farm gate, any little tinker around the edges of programs means nothing. 
In response to Bergman at the Pork Council saying nothing has changed, Ritz said yes it’s the livestock sectors looking for some changes. They’re the ones that seem to be at risk at this particular juncture with markets as they are and poor returns on investment and constrained by carbon taxes. In Rick’s case, heating the barns and hauling in feed and supplies and hogs out leaves them needing more assistance during difficult times. 
Bergman said pork producers had high expectations that provincial Ministers understood how difficult the situation is for pork producers and placed their hope in this program for meaningful financial assistance.  
“Our desired outcome was for provincial ministers to support the proposed solutions put forward by the federal government, including raising the program’s payment rate from 70 per cent to 80.”  
While the United States government sees the value in agriculture and supports agriculture producers so they remain efficient and competitive, CPC strongly encourages the federal government to move forward with provinces that believe all producers should receive the assistance they need. •
— By Harry Siemens