The Tory agenda for agriculture: more of the same

Monday, October 7, 2013

In the next throne speech, ag minister Gerry Ritz will likely be asked to continue what he has been doing – reduce costs and keep expenses under control, make programs more market-oriented and, above all, keep a grip on those rural blue ridings

by BARRY WILSON

Eugene Whelan loved to tell stories about his unlikely relationship with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Whelan was a southwest Ontario local politician and farmer with limited education and a fractured vocabulary that he called "Whelanese." Trudeau was an urbane, well-educated intellectual from a wealthy Montreal family who spoke several languages eloquently and wouldn't know which end of a combine gave milk.

Yet for almost 11 years, from late 1972 until mid-1984 with a nine-month interregnum out of power, Whelan and Trudeau were a team. Whelan was his agriculture minister and Trudeau stayed out of his way.

Whelan relished telling the story of a conversation he had with Trudeau as he was asked yet again to be the Liberal agriculture minister, despite some controversies. He had broad recognition within the agriculture community as a farmer's advocate and was a relentless rural campaigner for the Liberals.

"I don't know what you do," Whelan quoted Trudeau as saying. "But keep doing it."

It is easy to imagine a similar conversation this autumn between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, reappointed to cabinet in the summer for at least another two years until the October 2015 election.

By then, he will be Canada's fifth-longest-serving agriculture minister, and longest-serving Conservative, although Sydney Fisher's 15 years and Whelan's almost 11 years still would be in the distance and no one will surpass Jimmy Gardiners' 22 years (1935-57).

Harper is hardly Trudeau effete. Being an Ontario transplant to Calgary, he knows that milk comes out of the back end of a combine. But beyond ideological positions on issues such as the Canadian Wheat Board, it is difficult to imagine Harper with deep agriculture knowledge or an agenda other than downsizing government.

So when Ritz receives his "mandate letter" from the prime minister this autumn, when a new parliamentary session begins, it is easy to imagine it saying: "I don't know what you do but keep doing it."

Ritz has managed some tough files, fulfilled Tory priorities for deregulation and cost cutting, made some gaffes and yet helped keep the government solidly popular in rural Canada. Despite the urban media chatter about suburbia being the pathway to Conservative governments, the 60 or more blue rural seats are the base upon which the Harper government built its 2011 majority.

So what might the Ritz "mandate letter" for the next two years look like?

There will be no clarion call for historic initiatives to appeal to the base like the end of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly. That already has been done. Ditto the end of the long gun registry.

So expect the 2013-15 agenda outlined in the new government "mandate letter" (not made public) to instruct Ritz to do more of the same – reduce costs, keep farm business risk management spending under control, promote trade, make agricultural programs more market-oriented and research more industry-driven.

The next two-year mandate also will be regulatory heavy, creating rules for the new Safe Food Act and changing crop variety registration rules.

It will not be in the mandate letter, but Ritz also will be given an important political job – keeping as many of those rural seats as possible in the Conservative camp in the election buildup. BF

Barry Wilson is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery specializing in agriculture.