After waiting this long for the job, newly appointed agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief is not about to let anyone suggest he was shortchanged.
It is true that in the new federal cabinet, western grain issues and the Canadian Wheat Board have been pared from his empire.
But he bristles at any suggestion that this makes him the agriculture minister for everywhere but Western Canada in a diminished portfolio.
“The wheat board is barley and wheat,” he said last week when he thought a reporter was insinuating he had been appointed agriculture minister for Eastern Canada, with Ralph Goodale, responsible for natural resources and the Canadian Wheat Board, as the western agriculture minister. “There is a lot that happens in Western Canada that isn’t barley and wheat.”
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He mentioned research, diversification, and other crops among the issues.
More than marketing
“The wheat board is marketing. It has nothing to do with production, safety nets and all the other things that go with growing barley and wheat.”
Meet Lyle Vanclief, an eastern Ontario farmer and politician who has dreamed about the job long enough that he isn’t about to let anyone suggest he is anything less than the full minister of agriculture and agrifood.
His background makes it look as if he has been in training for this job most of his life.
He was raised as a farm kid, joined 4-H, took an agriculture degree at the University of Guelph, Ont., developed Willowlee Farms Ltd. into a 1,600-acre fruit, vegetable, grains and livestock operation, was featured in a 1978 Country Canada television profile as “The Wizard of Willowlee”, with wife Sharon won a Young Farmers of the Year award in 1983 and became involved in farm politics.
In politics since 1988, he has been opposition agriculture critic and was a strong supporter of Jean ChrŽtien at the 1990 Liberal leadership convention. In government after 1993, he served as parliamentary secretary to the agriculture minister, and later as chair of the Commons agriculture committee.
Yet it has not been a flawless, trouble-free climb for Vanclief.
Farmers who approach the new minister with tales of income squeeze and dancing with their banker on the edge of a cliff will have found a sympathetic, knowledgeable ear.
A decade ago, Vanclief too was dancing with his creditors, working 16 hours a day just to keep afloat and fearful of losing it all. Through the growth years, he had accumulated huge debt at crippling interest rates. In the end, he sold the operation to get out of the debt hole, leaving just 160 acres for son Kurt to establish a custom hog operation.
“I know how debt can catch up with you,” he once told an interviewer.
But if these same farmers expect Vanclief to be sympathetic to an argument for more government intervention to help them out, they likely will be disappointed.
The new agriculture minister is decidedly on the conservative side of the Liberal ledger, believing in government safety nets but expecting farmers to be entrepreneurial and market-dependent.
He is a strong believer in trade, self-reliance and business principles. If possible, the government role should be limited to creating the climate for business, getting out of the way and intervening with support only as a last resort.
“The days of government as an active and regular player are over,” he has said. “No one, even governments, can afford to spend what they do not have.”
