Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry - File photo

By Sheldon Spackman

Dreeshen says budget lays out growth strategy for agriculture and forestry

Mar 4, 2020 | 10:07 AM

RED DEER, AB. — Alberta’s minister in charge of agriculture is confident Budget 2020 sets up his industry in a good way moving forward.

“We have a very ambitious, value added growth strategy,” says Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.

“There is $1.4 billion dollars in new investment that we would like to see invested in Alberta for the next four years,” says Dreeshen. “We’ve pegged it at about 2,000 net new jobs that would be created in the agriculture value added space.”

Dreeshen, MLA for Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, notes the province has identified commodity-specific types of value added investments in Alberta, whether it’s a canola crush plant, or potato processing plant, but to enable both global and local investors the ability to set up shop in Alberta.

“Ultimately, with our competitive business tax rates, we have the lowest taxes in Canada,” says Dreeshen. “We have lower taxes than 44 US states.”

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Dreeshen says a continued focus on red tape reduction in 2020 should also make it easier for businesses to set up shop and build in Alberta.

“It’s very forward-looking, jobs focused,” he explains. “With the possibilities in agriculture, it’s a great budget.”

The government’s vision doesn’t come without an immediate cost, however. Fifty agriculture and forestry jobs were cut in last fall’s budget, with another 277 jobs affected by the latest budget tabled Thursday.

“We are looking at efficiencies within Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, we did identify positions to be reduced,” admits Dreeshen. “In the four years of the previous government and PC governments before the NDP government, we looked at areas in which there was an exceptional high growth in staff, but not actually in service and with outcomes. It is something that we’re trying to operate the Agriculture and Forestry department like a business.”

Dreeshen says the government had to go through the process of finding where they can deliver the same or better services with less.

“We can’t specifically go and talk about the actual specific positions yet due to the collective bargaining agreement that we have with the unions. But, we have identified areas that can be streamlined.”

Dreeshen notes this year’s Agriculture and Forestry budget identified $46 million in savings, which he says will go towards paying down the province’s debt.

“It’s something we painstakingly went through to make sure that service levels would be maintained throughout this process,” adds Dreeshen. “We also did look at focusing on where government needs to be involved. If government is in a space, whether its program delivery that just doesn’t make sense anymore, there would be programs that we would eliminate going forward, but the core, key concepts whether it be food safety or quality assurance, there’s over $60 million still being committed to that work.”

Dreeshen says agriculture research will be funded at $37 million per year over the next three years.

Rail service and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) are other issues Dreeshen says the government and Alberta’s farmers are keeping a close eye on.

“A lot of economic modelling and economists have said the Coronavirus has the potential to cause a global downturn,” admits Dreeshen. “That obviously would affect commodity prices, which in turn affects our energy and our agriculture and forestry sector. So this budget is very conservative and we had a lot of not very rosy assumptions on the outlook going forward.”

Dreeshen says that rail blockades across the country also need to stop.

“The Western Grain Elevator Association put out a statement saying about $9 million a day is being added to the cost of farmers not being able to haul their grain and contract penalties,” he exclaims. “And not being able to ship, or boats at ports not being able to ship out. It’s a major problem with the rail disruptions.”

Coming off of a difficult harvest in 2019, Dreeshen says the government will do its best to have the backs of producers.

“We are going to do everything we can to open up new markets and create the economic opportunities on a global scale, so that our farmers can continue to compete and continue to produce the high quality, best food in the world,” says Dreeshen. “Whether it’s defending the industry against special interest groups that seem to demonize our Ag industry, we want to be able to promote it with industry, so that everybody around the world and within Canada knows that our modern agriculture sector is the best in the world and needs to be celebrated.”