Below are some of the agricultural- and rural-related platforms of the major federal parties in the leadup to the Oct. 21 federal election.
Agendas are rolled out over time and the entire agriculture platforms were not available by press day.
Conservatives
• Ensure that rural regions receive their fair share of infrastructure funding with a budget specifically for them.
• Appoint a Minister of Rural Affairs.
• Take the GST off home heating costs.
• Scrap the Carbon Tax.
• End corporate welfare.
• Reduce federal regulations by 25 per cent.
• Repeal Trudeau’s tax increases on small business investments.
Green
• Reduce the paperwork burden on small businesses by eliminating duplicative tax filings and red tape.
• Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
• Create a new robot tax. Whenever a worker is replaced by a machine, the company must pay a tax that is equivalent to the income tax that would have paid by the laid-off employee.
• Biofuels can be made from waste plant matter from forests and agriculture, but not from food.
Liberals
• Reduce red tape.
• Work with mayors and premiers to give them the ability to further restrict — and even ban — handguns.
• Strengthen safe-storage laws, and create new rules on where and how guns are advertised, marketed, and sold.
• Commit Canada to net-zero emissions by 2050.
• Cut the small business tax rate from 11 % to 9 %.
NDP
• Make it easier for the family business to be passed on to future generations.
• Streamline access to government export services.
• A Canadian Food Strategy that will invest in agricultural communities, and support young and new farmers.
• Protect supply management. Compensate farmers for losses in trade negotiations. Defend Canadian agricultural products from retaliation in overseas markets.
• Provide low-cost start-up loans for new farmers.
• End the current tax treatment of family farm transfers to make it easier for farms to stay in the family.
• Develop a national strategy to address mental health challenges facing farmers.
• Introduce a payment protection program for produce growers and take immediate steps to restore protection for growers selling to the United States under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act.
• Work with producers along the supply chain to increase the amount of Canadian food that is sold, processed, and consumed in local and regional markets.
• Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
People’s Party
• Phase out the supply management system over a number of years, and compensate them for the lost value of their quotas.
• Allow Canada’s dairy, egg and poultry farmers to sell their products internationally.
