2-22: Help to farmers vowed

TABER -- Amid rumblings of unrest in Alberta's rural south, Premier Ralph Klein insisted his government is committed to assisting hard-pressed farmers reeling under high input costs and low commodity prices.

As Klein took his election campaign through Medicine Hat, Taber and Lethbridge yesterday, local elected officials and residents said a Tory victory in the province's agricultural breadbasket wasn't a foregone conclusion.

"I think (the Tories) are going to have to work at it," said Taber Mayor Harley Phillips.

"You'd be a fool not to know we've got a few issues to iron out."

Those issues, say the locals, usually come down to health-care accessibility and the impact electricity deregulation is expected to have on farming overhead costs.

Currently, the closest thing the Liberals have to a rural seat in the entire province is in Spruce Grove, a bedroom community of Edmonton.

The party also has Lethbridge MLA Ken Nicol, but a Grit spokesman said Nicol may get some company in Alberta's far south.

"Our people down there are totally invigorated -- they thought they would be fighting a real uphill battle but they're finding people are warming to the Liberal message for the first time in 30 or 40 years," said Derek Raymaker.

"Of course, it's still going to be a tough uphill fight."

He said the province's funding neglect of rural regional health authorities is heard at doorways throughout rural Alberta.

Klein visited the Rogers Sugar plant at Taber, but said there was no need to go to the nearby Lamb Weston french fry factory, a facility which postponed a $50-million expansion, due partly, to uncertainty of deregulated electricity costs.

"The cost of power was a small part of the situation there and they have given us assurances that expansion will go ahead," said Klein.

The premier said his party won't unveil any new agricultural support programs during the election, choosing to avoid what he called "political opportunism."

But Klein said his government's provision last year of $230 million in grants to farmers hit by low grain prices shows the Tories' hearts are in rural Alberta.

And he vowed to press Ottawa to co-operate with the provinces in providing price cushions on increasingly expensive fertilizer for farmers.

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