Canada's rural communities remain Tory blue

Monday, October 19, 2015

by JIM ALGIE

While the rest of the country picked a strong, Liberal majority government during Monday’s general election, many of Canada’s mainly-agricultural ridings stayed solidly Conservative.

The Liberal sweep left surviving Conservative MPs in rural southwestern Ontario, the day after, counting lost colleagues from the province’s many, predominantly urban ridings. But electors in the south Saskatchewan riding of Battlefords—Lloydminster provided Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz with his seventh electoral victory, voting Conservative along with other key agricultural regions of Saskatchewan, Alberta and southwestern Ontario. The day after his party’s defeat at the hands of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, Ritz took the strong rural vote as a compliment and some consolation.

“I feel good about that,” Ritz said during an interview from Saskatchewan, Thursday, referring to continued Conservative strength in agricultural ridings. “I think it speaks to the consultative nature that we’ve had in putting together programs for the industry.”
“The only poll that is accurate is election day and we’ve seen support for the Conservative program in rural Canada is second to none,” Ritz said. After eight years in the portfolio, Ritz remains Canada’s agriculture minister until Prime Minister-elect Trudeau appoints his replacement, likely by month’s end.

Meanwhile, there are several pressing issues for the new government, including ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, retaliatory tariffs against U.S. Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) and a review of Canada’s rail transportation regulations.

Asked about the fate of Stephen Harper’s government, Ritz wasted little time in mourning.

“We’ve been the opposition before and we were very good at it, pushing the Liberals in directions that they weren’t sure they wanted to go,” Ritz said. He expects to cooperate in the transition to Liberal rule but underlined the need for quick action both on trade and COOL.

“At the end of the day we’ll have to see where they go and what they actually do,” Ritz said of the new government. “They went 78 days as a party and didn’t really say what they would do,” he said of the recently concluded campaign.

“They talked about the plan; they talked about the great job they were going to do for the middle class but really nobody knows what that is,” Ritz said.

In agriculture specifically, the Liberals will need to move quickly. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is expected to set the amount of retaliatory tariffs in Canada’s protest against U.S. Country of Origin Labelling law by early December and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement awaits ratification, the minister said.

“It’s a matter of us starting to attach those tariffs on to products coming in to Canada and of course you have to do that with a bit of finesse,” Ritz said, referring to Canada’s claim for as much as $1.5 billion in annual damages following years of  successful WTO litigation.

“Anybody coming in right now they’re going to be up to their ears in transition work right away,” Ritz said.

In Ontario, veteran Tory MP and former Agriculture Committee chairman Larry Miller returned to office with his second-largest vote total, as did many neighbouring rural MPs. Miller cites general dissatisfaction with Conservative leader Stephen Harper for the party’s general disfavour among electors. The 11-year parliamentary veteran also referred to a “huge, urban rural divide” that is “nowhere any more prevalent than in Ontario” and has likely been accentuated by a variety of policies of the current Liberal provincial government.

Rural electors tend to favour less government, Miller said. At the same time, recent years of relative prosperity in agriculture worked in favour of rural Tories.

“With agriculture, how it is, all the commodities are banging on all cylinders,” Miller said. “I don’t think we can as a government take all the credit,” Miller said, but he did credit his government’s trade policy as a major source of agricultural support.

“Anybody out there who is naive enough to think that our trade policy doesn’t have something big to do with that is living in another world,” Miller said.  “For almost two years now, maybe it’s longer, I hardly ever hear from a farmer,” he said.

“What does that tell me? It tells me that things are pretty dang good in agriculture,” Miller said.

The election also leaves industry observers and lobbyists to speculate about implications of the new government about a variety of pending policy decisions. Ontario Federation of Agriculture President Don McCabe reiterated his organization’s recent emphasis on the need for improved business risk management programs for farmers as well as restoration of basic research funding cut under Harper as well as greater federal spending on infrastructure serving agriculture and rural communities for such services as natural gas and broadband communications.

“I think we have to remember we just came out of a majority government,” McCabe said, underlining the need for continued work to convince the new Liberal government of the importance of agriculture as “the major driver of the economy here in Ontario and no slacker at the national level in what it does for the overall GDP of the country.”

Grain Farmers of Ontario chair Mark Brock figures rural Ontario is “a little gun shy of a Liberal government” because of recent experience with the provincial Liberals over issues such as neonicotinoid chemicals, The Green Energy Act and Great Lakes water quality regulation. But Brock made a point of consulting senior Liberals before the election, including agriculture critic Mark Eyking, and he’s willing to give the new government the benefit of the doubt. Eyking, who was re-elected in his Cape Breton riding, could not be reached for comment, Tuesday.


“We’re just waiting to see how the cabinet shapes up on the federal side and look forward to working with them on issues nationally and hope that they stay along the lines of the conversations we had before the election,” Brock said.

Brock described Conservative ground work on trade, particularly, as “very supportive for our industry.”

“I’d hate to see some of that work torn down just because it was done by the Conservative Party,” Brock said.

“They do have a learning curve, I think; but that’s always a challenge with a new government,” the GFO chair said. “I think Canada wanted a change and that’s reflected in the polls. I think change is double edged and, when it’s new, some people get nervous.” He added he’s prepared to “take the challenge of working with the new government in a positive light.”

Differences between the federal Conservatives and Ontario Liberal governments had confounded attempts in the province to match business risk management programs for Ontario farmers. Brock said the new federal government may be able to help change the situation.

“It’s been a controversial issue between the provincial Liberals and the federal Conservatives, and so having a Liberal majority federal government now, it will be interesting to see what direction business risk management programs take seeing it’s a new party and a new agriculture minister,” Brock said. BF