Alberta’s farmer-funded organizations can grasp a golden opportunity with the end of the Progressive Conservative reign and the beginning of the NDP era.
These organizations shouldn’t see it as an opportunity to marry themselves to the NDP and its agenda, but rather a chance to develop more independence and self-confidence than was often seen during the four-decade PC epoch.
For me, a pleasing aspect of having worked in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta as a Western Producer reporter (and at other newspapers before that) has been seeing how different provinces have different farming, political and organizational cultures, structures and practices. Each province has a unique feel.
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When I worked in our Camrose bureau in 1996-97, it was odd to find many farmer-funded commodity commissions and organizations but a crippled general farm organization.
I was used to Saskatchewan and Manitoba having strong, independent general farm organizations (at the time, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities was essentially a farmers’ organization) but not the plethora of commissions that were present in Alberta.
The weak situation of Wild Rose Agricultural Producers (now the Alberta Federation of Agriculture) was surprising. Some farmers grumbled about an apparent deliberate government policy of dividing farmers into small, commodity-based groups rather than having to deal with them as a united front. WRAP didn’t get much respect from the Alberta government at the time.
The previous year, a special report on this subject by Ottawa correspondent Barry Wilson had annoyed the Alberta government, as I was informed by the agriculture minister’s office on arriving in Camrose.
Then and in the decades since, many Alberta organizations, both in agriculture and rural affairs, seemed unusually solicitous of government approval and seldom seemed to criticize government policies or put the provincial government on the spot publicly for something that farmers needed done.
That degree of restraint did not seem to be shared by organizations to the east, where Saskatchewan and Manitoba groups regularly embarrassed provincial governments that failed to address crucial farmer concerns.
Perhaps the Alberta situation was just a function of each organization being small and focused on the minutiae of its specific commodity. Or perhaps it was fear of offending the government.
The latter possibility is understandable in a province where the government never changes.
If the present party in power is almost certainly going to be the government after the next election, and the ones after that, then getting along with it is critical.
However, the collapse of the PC government and its replacement by an NDP majority and Wildrose official opposition demonstrates that this might no longer be the case.
That’s the opportunity for the various farmer organizations. They can assert some independence and in-form, publicly and privately, the new government on what farmers need.
A government such as the Alberta NDP, with no farmers in its caucus, might be receptive to hearing farmers’ independent views more than a dynastic government confident of its permanent success.
Farmers don’t need to fear they’re forever stuck with the government they’ve got today, and the government can’t assume it’s always going to be there.
That’s good grounds for an open, confident relationship between farmers and government.
ed.white@producer.com
