Update March 30, 2015: I guess I really don’t feel the same way now. Ideally there shouldn’t need to be subsidies. It just means government interference, which can often be a bad thing (might be a good thing in theory if they actually prevented pesticides from being built into corn, etc, but they don’t). Independence is critical. However, local Canadian farming needs to be encouraged and built up and protected in some way from so-called “free trade” that just helps to destroy our independence and prosperity. At least they should be supported by Canadians showing their voluntary support. But are farmers accountable to concerns about gmo’s, pesticides and health? Or do they just go along with international monopolies? Successive governments are signing us over to globalized “free trade” which is just going to impoverish everyone and impose the same poisons or “standards” on everyone. So I am still very skeptical of government. Governments are the ones who sign the globalist trade agreements. They follow the agenda of a “governing minority,” to use Bertrand Russell’s term.

Post from 2006:

Harper says era of rural neglect is over in Ottawa with new Tory government (http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/news/shownews.jsp?content=n040665A)
www.macleans.ca, April 6 ’06

Harper says he “will make good on a half-billion dollars in new aid to farmers”. He’ll “also be pushing for “phased reductions” of international agriculture subsidies that have been depressing farm produce prices.”

So, agricultural subsidies continue, with our tax money, but the Conservatives expect other nations to reduce subsidies. In other words, the P.M. wants to be against subsidies and yet continue them. How can the Canadian government convince other nations to reduce subsidies if it doesn’t set an example?