Sam Van Uden, 21, runs the seeder on a prairie farm in southern Alberta. It’s good hours, but the paycheque doesn’t stretch the way it did for young adults who used to start this way.
That’s what he wants this federal election campaign to focus on, and he’s not alone.
“Talking to my parents, the money that I’m making now would have done them really well 15 or 20 years ago. But now it’s nothing,” he said.
“Grocery prices are through the roof, gas prices, vehicle prices…. The new middle class isn’t $70K to $80K a year. It’s $120K to live that middle class life where you actually own a home, you own one or two vehicles newer than 10 years old and can afford to put your kids through sports.”
“It’s just, it’s really hard trying to push and build a future for ourselves.”
CBC News was at the Agricultural Exhibition in Lethbridge, Alta., several weeks before the federal election was called, talking with dozens of farmers and representatives from agricultural businesses from across southern Alberta.
- What issue matters the most to you this federal election, and why? Share your personal stories with us at [email protected].
WATCH | How agriculture workers in Lethbridge feel about the upcoming federal election | What Matters
CBC is asking Canadians from coast to coast to coast what their top priorities are for this federal election. We asked attendees at the Agriculture Expo in Lethbridge what topics matter the most to them.
This is solid conservative territory — a region with a voting pattern that’s so predictable, the political race here is normally a sleeper.
But on this day, CBC News was not asking for voting intentions. We asked about hopes and priorities.
An election campaign is a chance to debate a country’s future, so we asked farmers about the issues that mattered to them this time around. What do they want the candidates to debate, and maybe even fix?
Van Uden is from Vauxhall, Alta., population 1,400. He works on a seed farm, but he hesitates when he thinks about settling down and having kids. Inflation, the cost of housing and groceries — these feel like a crisis, he said.
That’s what he wants politicians to focus on. He said everything else feels like a distraction.
“That’s where I’d like to see a lot of change,” he said. “I respect anyone, all the LGBTQ. We all have our own life to live. You live it to your truth.
“But I’m tired of seeing the government constantly just easing to that side, constantly going on with it when I’d actually like to see them try and make this country livable and affordable for us to be a great country again.”
Cost of living ranks high across the country
During the federal election campaign, CBC News teams are asking these questions in different communities across the country, and at the Ag-Expo, we spoke with more than 40 people in the market hall.
Lethbridge County sits in the centre of southern Alberta, about 75 kilometres from the American border. It’s a land of rolling hills, cattle feedlots, irrigated fields and a mix of grains, potatoes, sugar beets and other specialty crops.
Federally, this district voted for centre-right parties during every election since the 1930s.
Many of the farmers, ranchers and agricultural business representatives here shared a strongly small-c conservative vision. They said southern Alberta is a land of exceptional opportunity for growing crops. But inflation, taxes and other costs have been making budgets tight, even before the U.S. tariffs. That creates a stress that drives some small farms under, and many want the candidates to set aside political distractions to focus on reducing costs, reducing taxes and growing markets for their products.
That concern about cost echoes what’s heard on the national stage.
At the end of February, the polling company Leger asked 1,500 respondents for the No. 1 issue facing Canadians. It was tariffs, then inflation and respondents under 34 were the most likely to say inflation. For Nanos Research, respondents said the most important national issue of concern was U.S. relations and then jobs.
In an interview, Alberta-based pollster Janet Brown said in her polling, cost of living has been the dominant concern for two years. She believes tariffs are catching the public’s attention in such a dramatic way because people are already so price-conscious and worried.
On the busy market floor in Lethbridge, farmers went from booth to booth, checking new hay bailers, solar panel technologies and soil testing techniques. Tariffs on steel could drive up the cost of heavy equipment and drive down prices for grain and specialty crops.
CBC News was at the Ag-Expo just before the March 4 deadline when U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canada. Several people said they were keen to see Canada tackle interprovincial trade barriers, especially by improving the highway system.
‘Ticked off’ by carbon tax
But even a tariff threat didn’t erase other long-standing irritants. For many in this crowd, the carbon tax was still the horse to flog — even though both Conservative and Liberal leaders had, at that point, said they will replace or axe it. Liberal Leader Mark Carney passed a prime ministerial directive to eliminate it at his first cabinet meeting.
Many at the Ag-Expo see it as an unnecessary burden landing on top of everything else.
Tony Bos was happy to illustrate that. He farms specialty crops near Coaldale, Alta., 15 kilometres northeast of Lethbridge. The farm fuel for his vehicles is exempt from the carbon tax, but his suppliers and service crews face extra costs that filter down, and there’s no exemption for the natural gas that heats his house and shop.
His January heating bill for the shop and house combined was $2,987, of which the carbon tax was $1,101.
“Every time I look, I get ticked off,” he said. “I’m getting punished as a Canadian living in a cold country, heating my house. I just don’t like that.”
The rebate for a couple living outside a major city in Alberta is $405 per quarter.
Bos doesn’t deny the climate is changing but wants Canada to be realistic about how much it can accomplish. He also blames the Liberal government for inflation because of the amount of spending during the pandemic. He thinks they went “way overboard.”
“They had money flowing out of all sides of their pockets to anybody,” he said. “It was totally uncalled for. I know they had to do something, but spending all that extra free money, you dilute the pot. You dilute the value of your dollar and you get inflation. It’s very basic economics.”
“I feel we have to go back to basics and just pay for what we can afford [in order to] focus on infrastructure. That’s what our country needs, good infrastructure so we can move our stuff to the markets.”
Youth feeling anxious about the future
Lethbridge County Reeve Tory Campbell calls this area “the most productive agricultural municipality in Alberta.”
He said producers here now generate more than $4 billion a year toward Canada’s GDP. Growth has been driven by new opportunities in agricultural food processing, such as the Cavendish Farms potato processing centre, and the technology improvements that let them use water more efficiently.
That means more opportunity, but the flip side is that capital costs and prices have increased. A hectare of non-irrigated land went from $600 per acre to $5,000 per acre in 20 years, according to Farm Credit Canada, and irrigated land is three times as much. That makes it hard for young people to get into the industry.
That was the undercurrent of many conversations — young people want to see a place for themselves but feel anxious about the options and the cost.
Zaine Helland, a 22-year-old new college graduate from Lomond, Alta., studied agriculture and said she’s keen to help her family adopt new technologies to improve efficiency on the farm. But again, she said she wants candidates to focus on the cost of living — rent, groceries and fuel.
She said: “I’m kind of worried about my future, and if I’m ever going to be able to not live in debt and afford a house.”
Leslie Bostad can’t vote yet. He’s just 16 and, like Helland, he loves working on this family’s seed farm. It’s going well but with increased input costs, it feels fragile. Just the other day, a neighbour had a fire that took out a million-dollar combine and 40-acres worth of crops. That’s hard to come back from.
He said he wants candidates to focus on a plan to reduce costs and find tax breaks so he can keep doing this work forever.
“I couldn’t live in the city; I know that,” he said. “Living, breathing the country, working, trying to figure things out. It’s like, this broke, you’re trying to jimmy-rig it with bailer twine and two bolts; make it work. I love it all.”
Looking for growth and opportunities
The anxiety among the youth doesn’t go unnoticed.
Hal Reed is an agronomist with nine grandchildren. His family is doing fine, but he sees that malaise.
“I think we’ve got a generation that isn’t quite as optimistic in the future,” he said. “We just need to get confidence back in our country, from our government.”
Talking with farmers, for many it seems to come down to reining in taxes and spending so businesses and policy makers can focus on the right infrastructure investments, with the ultimate goal of getting the economy to a place where it gives secure opportunities for generations.
Georgina Knitel stood in the market hall across from a new bailer at the end of the day. She’s a business advisor who does succession planning with family farms, and summed up the hope people seem to be looking for amid high costs and tariffs.
“I really would like to see the candidates speak about our resource development and how we could leverage that to help drive our productivity,” she said, pointing to countries like the Netherlands, which manages high agricultural outputs with limited natural resources.
“I don’t think borrowing our way or taxing our way is going to get us out of the predicament we’re in. So if we could talk about how to develop [resources], and if we want to hold those entrepreneurs and those companies to the highest environmental and social standards, so be it.”
