The
Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute (CAPI) has produced a new report. Predictably it's loaded with fashionable eco-buzzwords and bureaucratic bullcrap. From
Peter Foster's scathing critique:
... a steaming shovel-ready pile of policy titled Canada’s Agri-Food Destination, which amounts to a non-fiction rewrite of Animal Farm for the 21st century: a self-parody of bureaucratic pretension.
... The CAPI report produces grand Soviet-style targets before getting down to the nitty-gritty of planting new gobbledegook-fertilized bureaucracies as far as the eye can see.
... three pieces of numerical mysticism, two anti-economic mercantilist fallacies and subscription to an established policy disaster before we’ve even left the first page of the executive summary.
... The path to agri-nirvana requires five bureaucratic “Enablers of Change.” ...
... Here is the media’s role: “Link the important issues to prompt change ... [as for global warming, eco-brainwashing and badgering]
... It’s uncertain what the Harper government thinks of this Liberal-created bureaucratic monstrosity or its latest report.
And you can't miss Mr. Foster's exasperation with it all in his closing recommendation:
... [Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry] Ritz should take the whole organization, now ensconced in pseudo-agricultural splendor on the grounds of Ottawa’s legendary experimental farm, out to a more remote rural location with a long gun and a shovel.
Bravo, Peter!
I'd like to hear what Ignatieff has to say about it. He's been musing recently about a National Food program. Maybe this will be the model for Liberal policy.
ReplyDeleteYeah, just what we need, a government run "National Food Program". Cheezus! Someone ought to tell that idiot Ignatief we already have a system that's working fine without government "help". It's made up of free market farmers, importers, exporters and grocers. Any dysfunctional parts of it involve gov't mandated monopoly operations - the marketing boards.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know when any of the idiots clamouring for a National Food Program ran out of food and went hungry because our system failed them. The answer would be "NEVER". But if the government gets involved any more than they are now that risk will surely skyrocket.
In fairness, it doesn't propose a National Food Program. I skimmed it and I can't see it proposing a darned thing, beyond, as Foster very accurately puts it, a whole bunch of "gobbledygook." It aimlessly wanders around the issue for 102 pages before concluding that the most important things are to "deepen inter-departmental coordination" and "ensure regulations do not conflict."
ReplyDeleteJust what farmers need! An inter-departmental committee!
Sixth, The CAPI report may not recommend a National Food Program, but Johndoe asserted that Ignatieff has been musing about it - as have any number of other food flakes in the media.
ReplyDelete