LYLE Vanclief became agriculture minister June 11, 1997 believing he could do good for a sector he worked in for 25 years and had to leave because of a crushing debt load in 1988.
Fair or not, he leaves with a reputation as a politician who did not do well, so unconnected to the farm sector that he couldn’t even give away a billion dollars without making farmers angry.
Bob Speller became the new agriculture minister Dec. 12 believing he can do good for the sector and bridge the chasm that has developed between Ottawa and the farm community over program design.
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The young and experienced MP from southwestern Ontario begins the job with much good will from the industry.
Based on his chairmanship of the prime minister’s task force on agriculture last year, he has the reputation of someone who listens, someone who will fulfill new prime minister Paul Martin’s pledge last July that farm policy will be made “with” and “by” farmers and not “for” them.
Martin also promised in a letter to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture that the government will take “all action reasonably possible to secure the industry’s future.”
These are grand promises. Like his boss, the new agriculture minister has raised expectations that will be difficult to meet and even more difficult to manage.
He inherits a lot of tough files: closed cattle markets, low wheat prices, American and European subsidies, impending registration of genetically modified wheat, low hog sector incomes, low grain sector incomes and a deeply flawed agricultural policy framework.
The new minister has offered few if any policy prescriptions for these problems and yet by not being Vanclief and by promising consultation, he is being welcomed by farm leaders as a breath of fresh air.
Last week, a bitter Vanclief partisan suggested farmers will become disgruntled when they discover there is little behind the promise.
What is Speller offering?
His reputation flows largely from the task force report of 2002, but not even that.
After all, the report was the work of a group of Liberal MPs, not just Speller and it offered little beyond government policy.
His real reputation comes from the cover letter he sent to then-prime minister Jean Chrétien warning that ham-handed dealings with farmers risked creating a damaging divide between the government and food producers.
Farmers saw it as a dig at Vanclief and they applauded.
Yet Speller arrives in the corner office on the ninth floor of the Sir John Carling building in Ottawa without having articulated what he will do differently, other than be a better listener.
Any self-respecting senior bureaucrat with a corner office view of what ails agriculture will see the arrival of this neophyte minister as a blessing, another empty vessel to be filled with ninth floor wisdom.
If he is to live up to the expectations of farmers, Speller will have to prove he is more than a sponge for bureaucratic solutions. He will have to do more than promise to listen.
He will have to make a gesture of independence from the old solutions.
Canada’s 29th federal agriculture minister sails into office with much industry good will and enormous challenges.
Bon voyage.
