ST. THOMAS, Ont. – It is enough to make your head spin, says former federal agriculture minister John Wise.
In the eight years since he resigned as agriculture minister and walked away from a political life, he has seen attitudes in Canada’s farm sector take a sharp turn to the right.
“It is mind-boggling,” Wise said recently in the living room of his farm house. “It is mind-boggling how things have changed, 180 degrees. The government is doing, and getting away with things we would never have dreamed of.”
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Wise was not trying to be partisan. Over the course of two hours, he did not utter a single criticism of the Liberals.
Political climate
Instead, he was describing what he sees as a change in the political climate since the Progressive Conservative party sat on the government benches.
“In my day, we didn’t have a market like we do, we had terrible interest rates, low commodity prices, floods, drought,” said the one-time dairy farmer and 16-year House of Commons veteran. “We put the agriculture budget up, some say by 429 percent. Farmers expected it and asked for more.”
In contrast, market prices for many commodities are high these days, subsidies have been slashed and farmers expect far less from their government.
“In our day, it would have been impossible to get rid of the Crow,” said Wise, referring to the rail transportation subsidy for grain the Liberals eliminated last year. “I certainly did more than my share at creating the deficit. Yet it was needed. Still, with all the billions we spent, people were still being forced out of the business. Now, Canadian agriculture is in much better shape.”
Wise occasionally can still be seen in the halls of Agriculture Canada headquarters, which he once ran from the corner office.
Now, he is on the other side of the table, negotiating cost recovery fees or other issues with the government as chair of the Canadian Livestock Exporters’ Association.
He said his experience with the cost recovery issue illustrates the point.
The livestock exporters’ association faced a government demand for fees on inspection, testing and a host of other services. After more than a dozen meetings, a deal was struck that both sides could accept.
Wise said during his days in government, he could not have pursued an aggressive cost recovery policy similar to the Liberal plan.
He remembers a mid-1980s proposal from Treasury Board that the agriculture department hike up fees for services to the industry.
“We told treasury board to go to hell,” said the former minister. “The money just wasn’t out there.”
These days, when he is not playing his part-time role in the livestock and embryo export business, Wise lives on the southern Ontario farm his family has owned for 140 years.
He rents out his farmland to a neighbor, plays a role in some local charities and enjoys himself.
After almost 30 years in local and federal politics, the 60 year old said politics plays almost no role in his life.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “I would do it over again. But it’s later than you think. You can stay too long. It was time to make my break.”
