The fields around Saskatoon looked greener than they have all summer
when federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief came to visit Aug. 19.
Months of drought had only recently given way to showers, followed by a
sunny day – an unlimited ceiling, as they say in aviation, so the
flights between Vanclief’s 10 a.m. rural Saskatchewan stop and his
1 p.m. rural Alberta stop could be expeditiously conducted.
At Netherdale ranch, Vanclief and a mass of media stepped around water
Read Also
Determining tariff compensation will be difficult but necessary
Prime minister Mark Carney says his government will support canola farmers, yet estimating the loss and paying compensation in an equitable fashion will be no easy task, but it can be done.
lying in the shallow ruts of the tidy farmyard, home to Tom and Merilyn
Hay. Grasshoppers leaped in front of the minister’s feet, one of them
hitching a ride on his pantleg until he carried it to a shin-high
barley field that Hay said might yield 10 bushels to the acre.
About half a mile away, Hay’s 30 Maine Anjou cow-calf pairs have been
turned into a wheat field that never grew. They pick among wild millet,
kochia and foxtail that sprang up after the rain. Hay will have to buy
feed this year to carry those cattle through the winter – five
truckloads of 40 tonnes each will come from Manitoba.
As for his crops, “we need a vacuum cleaner to pick the peas up. The
crop this year is going to be a salvage operation, that’s all it is.”
Hay didn’t mince words as he spoke with Vanclief and as he talked later
with reporters. He said he felt Western Canada has been ignored by the
federal government for political reasons, and that it has taken it too
long to recognize the depth of the drought problem here.
But Hay, who has welcomed delegations from Japan and Kazakhstan to his
farm, was also a gracious host.
“I guess I’m proud to help, proud to provide some place for him to make
an announcement … whatever people think of the announcement,” he said
after the minister had departed.
It’s telling, though not surprising, that the hosts at both sites
chosen for Vanclief’s drought whistle stops were critical of government
action – and inaction.
Quoted in the Globe and Mail, Alberta host Curtis Henkelmann of Leduc
said Vanclief “should have been out here two months ago.”
It’s apparently quite difficult to find Liberal-friendly farms out this
way. That might explain the brevity of the minister’s investigation of
the drought situation. It was long enough to announce funding
distribution and dollars for hay freight from Ontario.
But it wasn’t long enough to earn the minister any new fans out west.
