This is a tale about the evolution of farm politics toward a business-lobby model – The Canadian Chamber of Commerce meets the National Farmers Union.
It begins less than a year ago when beef industry leaders were looking at Ralph Goodale with quiet suspicion.
Tacked onto years of uneasy relations between conservative cattle producers and liberal Liberals was an industry suspicion that he was a minister for the grain sector.
“It is a general feeling that this government isn’t as receptive to us as we think it should be,” Canadian Cattlemen’s Association president Doug Gear said last August. “We sure are not on the priority list.”
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These days you’d never know that from listening to Goodale talk. The beef industry is his flavor of the month. In his eyes, it should be an inspiration to us #all.
Why? Because it is acting the way the minister wishes all industry sectors would act – quietly, co-operatively, business-like and without politics.
The icing on the cake for a fiscally conservative government and minister is that cattle producers say they don’t even want government help.
But the most visible term of endearment be-tween Goodale and the beef industry right now is that sector players have agreed to settle their differences in a businesslike manner, devoid of loud political squabbles.
In one short year, Goodale is telling anyone who will listen, beef industry players have been transformed from scratching, spitting cats-in-a-bag to partners.
Once-bitter enemies have become allies who know how to co-operate for the good of all.
The defining issue was the touchy, divisive debate over off-shore manufacturing beef imports and the domestic industry’s insistence that large import volumes were not needed. They could supply the market.
Under prodding from a government-created task force, beef importers have agreed to try to substitute domestic product for off-shore product.
Canadian cattle producers have agreed to maintain supply and packers have agreed to try to provide cuts that meet the further-processors’ specifications.
It should, if the words become actions, lead to a domestic market that absorbs tens of thousands of tonnes more Canadian product. It will mean money in the pockets of cattle producers and processors.
It is a living example of what Goodale, the political chairman-of-the-board, would like to see: Relations based on “trust and good will.”
“The time is right,” he told farm leaders last week. “Governments are taking a hard look at how they relate to each other and to the private sector.”
His message, in essence, is that the best political-business system would be one in which politics is all but absent.
It is reflected in his language. This summer, Goodale wants to stage a national conference to write a “business plan” for the Canadian food industry.
It sounds like a move toward a system in which squeaky-wheel farm politicians going public to defend their interests will seem out of step with the “team” approach.
Pity the farmers of the future, and their leaders, who are not part of the “team consensus.”
