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Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz

Details about cuts to the federal ag budget will be known within the next few weeks, according to the federal agriculture minister.

Budget documents outline a plan to reduce Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's departmental spending by $310 million or around 10 percent within three years.

"Over the coming days and weeks we'll be outlining those particular movements," says Gerry Ritz. "Our government was elected on a promise to balance our budget. That's exactly what we're doing by finding efficiencies and administrative cost savings throughout the entire department and CFIA."

Ritz says funding for farm business risk management programs past 2013 has yet to be determined.

"We're in the final year of the existing program suite, so as you know we're working with the industries, provinces and territories on the next suite of programming to take effect roughly a year form now," he says.

Included in the $310 million cut to AAFC's core budget is a plan to reduce Canadian Food Inspection Agency spending by $56 million by 2014-15. Ritz says food safety will not be compromised.

"There are no cuts to food safety coming through. The CFIA will be re-focusing its efforts more to the food safety side than anything to do with quality or labeling issues," he explains. "We'll be continuing to analyze what CFIA does best and what is required by consumers in Canada, and predominantly that's the food safety issues."

Although there were no new ag-specific research initiatives announced in the budget, Ritz says they're continuing with a number of ag research programs. Contrary to what farm groups have said about public research support falling short, Ritz argues public funding for ag research remains strong. For example, the Grain Growers of Canada say it would take increased investment of $26 million per year, for 10 years, to return to 1994 public ag research funding levels.

"We've gone back and analyzed our research. There's concern that we're not spending as much, but we certainly are. We're outspending 1994 levels even with inflation figured in," he says. "We'll continue to do that. We have the AgriInnovation fund and a number of other initiatives that all speak to sound research and development. We have a number of different initiatives that all coupled together show that we're very serious about innovation."

Budget highlights:

- $310 million in cuts to AAFC's departmental budget by 2014-15. $56 million of these cuts will be to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
- $44 million over two years to transition the Canadian Grain Commission to a sustainable funding model.
- $99.2 million over three years for permanent flood mitigation measures for the 2011 floods.
- $51.2 million over two years for streamlining the food safety regulation process, split between the CFIA, Public Health and Health Canada.
- commitment to implement the Canada-U.S. Action Plan on Regulatory Cooperation. 

Gerry Ritz talked about the budget in a teleconference from Regina this morning: