Farmer Jack tells Parliament a thing or two about beef

With a few hours' notice, Jack Tindall packed up his wife and son and drove nine hours to Ottawa this week to say his piece in Parliament.

The House of Commons held an emergency debate Thursday night on the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) crisis and the plight of farmers in Northern Ontario.

It was Tony Martin's first opportunity to address the House since being elected MP for Sault Ste. Marie.

Martin and Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus shared five minutes of air-time before the Chair and they wanted to put a human face on the issues so they invited the Tindall family to Ottawa.

Tindall is an Algoma cattle farmer who is intimately aware of the crisis and the toll it's taking on farmers in our area.

He is also on the advisory board for the Ontario Cattlemen's Association.

"He is one of 20-25 farmers in the Algoma district denied [Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization Program] funds because of the BSE relief program," Martin told SooToday.com.

What the government's been doing

The Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Recovery Program was introduced on June 10 in response to the declining cattle market prices that resulted from the closure of the U.S. border to edible bovine meat and bovine meat products in May 2003.

Although the border was partially re-opened in September, prices remain relatively low so the Canadian government introduced a BSE re-positioning program to ensure cattle farmers emain viable while the market rebuilds.

According to a release from the Ontario government, the program is designed to:

- continue efforts to reopen the U.S. border

- take steps to increase slaughter capacity in Canada

- introduce measures to sustain the cattle industry until the market becomes balanced

- expand access to export markets for both livestock and beef products

The government recently announced additional funding of $30-million to achieve the above goals.

What Tony Martin wants done

Martin contends that it isn’t new money at all, but an advance from Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization Program funds.

He told SooToday.com that farmers like Jack Tindall, who used Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Relief Program funds in the past year, were declared ineligible for stabilization program funds this year.

After stating his case to the Commons, Tindall retired to a private audience to fill in the details for Federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Andy Mitchell's aide while deliberation continued in the House.

"Jack Tindall was really passionate and really knew his stuff, and I think the minister was impressed," Martin said.

"We didn’t solve the [Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy] crisis tonight, but the minister seemed generally moved when I asked him to meet the family."

Other concerns

Speaking to reporters at his Sault Ste. Marie office on Friday, Martin said that this week's Throne Speech lacked substance and detail about money and specific plans.

The speech "contains items of merit particularly in the areas of social policy," Martin said. "I am, however concerned with its lack of details."

One project near and dear to Martin's heart, a national child care program, did get a mention in the speech.

It promised a plan for early learning and child care that will:

- start small and grow

- be based on a developmental model so children will have a head start at school

- be open to all

- be affordable and high quality

Show me the money

But Martin was disappointed that the speech didn't say when, how or how much money the government will give this plan, which he believes will be a system of publicly funded, regulated programs.

The Sault MP doesn't think a public day care system would have much negative impact on the existing for-profit systems.

"I have just completed a Pan-Canadian Child Care Fact Finding Tour where I met with frontline workers, parents, administrators and researchers," Martin said..

For earlier coverage of that tour click here.

Martin said that experience showed him that many private daycares are struggling to get by.

New Brunswick

"There are people in New Brunswick, for example, who've opened these childcare centres just so they could provide the service, because it was needed.

"One woman told me that if we were willing to give her what she initially paid to set the place up and hire her to manage it, she'd be ready to go."

Martin told media that this woman often had nothing left to pay herself after she met expenses at her private day care centre.

The MP returned from his tour of childcare centres with a vision for a comprehensive federal early childhood care system similar to publicly funded and legislated education or health care systems.

Now Martin is spearheading his party's drive to bring that vision to Ottawa and says he believes private daycares will be content to be grandfathered out or bought by the government.