Opinion: Trust in government is taking a beating

Lack of clarity in the federal government’s plan for agricultural greenhouse gas reductions hasn’t generated a lot of trust from farmers who, for the most part, don’t have much trust in the government to begin with.

That said, provincial politicians are willfully misleading producers and the public in order to take advantage of the situation. Shame on both.

The federal players should have anticipated that any rollout of a greenhouse gas reduction plan for agriculture had to be well described and thoroughly communicated because of the potential negative effects it could have on farmers’ incomes if poorly implemented.

The idea that a 30 percent reduction over a decade was aspirational rather than a fixed target was not clearly articulated when first announced.

That left room for interpretation from producers, who were already skeptical of Liberal policies after being told that the carbon tax wouldn’t have much of an effect on them. Trust is especially scarce among producers in provinces that fought the carbon pricing protocol in court and lost.

To be fair, the feds are now in the process of consulting with producer groups and industry to develop responsible guidelines for agricultural emissions. But yet again, they missed the mark on timing by holding those consultations at harvest time in Western Canada. Delaying talks until early November would have eliminated concerns that the government was trying to keep some farmers from being involved.

Suspicions that the federal government could willfully damage Canadian agriculture are not easily eased, in large part because many in the West see policies that will have negative outcomes for the oil and gas industry. This helped create cracks for conservative politicians and political actors to undermine faith in the federal government.