Players take stage – Opinion

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Published: March 2, 2006

THE PLAYERS on the parliamentary chessboard now are in place for the April 3 start of the game.

Let the game begin. Let’s hope the games don’t.

Last week, the opposition Liberals completed the lineup by naming former dairy farmer, farm leader and agriculture parliamentary secretary Wayne Easter from Prince Edward Island as agriculture critic, supported by Commons agriculture committee chair Paul Steckle from Ontario.

In House of Commons debate and daily Question Period, they will be responsible for holding the Conservative government accountable, for probing the details of Conservative action or inaction in fulfilling election promises to add money to and redesign safety nets.

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That is the political parliamentary game that creates the policies that have made Canada an economic, social and democratic gem in the world. Easter and Steckle brim with industry and parliamentary experience and should provide solid, knowledgeable, credible opposition.

Let the game begin.

But also, let them realize that several million more Canadians voted for the Conservatives Jan. 23 than for the Liberals. The Conservative government, as opposition leader Bill Graham has implied, is not a fluke that only will attain legitimacy if it implements Liberal policy.

Seventy percent of Canadians voted against the Liberals and a plurality voted for a Conservative government. Easter and Steckle would be playing games, not the game, if they insist the new government honour all Liberal promises and plans.

The Conservatives – woe unto them that inherit the current farm economy – promised change and they should be judged on how those changes work rather than on how those changes deviate from Liberal prescriptions. Rural Canada largely rejected Liberal prescriptions.

The game will be to have these experienced parliamentarians hold the novice Conservatives to account for what they promised and how they deliver.

The games will be if the political debate revolves around how the Conservatives fall short of what the Liberals said they would do. Canadian farmers have been there, done that and have the negative income to prove it.

It’s doubtful a Conservative government can stand market forces on their head and make farming profitable again. But that is its challenge and the measure against which the new government should be judged, rather than the pie-in-the-sky problem fixing the Liberals were famous for promising.

Meanwhile, the rural-deprived New Democratic Party has announced the other major part of the chessboard – that rookie interior British Columbia MP Alex Atamanenko, without an agricultural background but representing a riding with some farmers, will be the NDP critic.

Rookie agriculture minister Chuck Strahl, also without a discernable agricultural connection but representing some supply management farmers and cattle ranchers, will be in the drivers’ seat. He has been engaged in a crash course of learning, marathon departmental briefings, meetings with sometimes-rude farm representatives and hopeful provincial ministers.

Easter, a dozen years in government but hardwired to be happier and sharper as a critic, will be a formidable inquisitor. Strahl, with a month left to learn the alchemy of farm policy, must become a rock of the Conservative government, exuding hope to the millions of rural voters who believed. Let the game begin.

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