Another high-profile farm leader has announced her intention to run in the upcoming federal election.
Former National Farmers Union president Nettie Wiebe is seeking the nomination as the NDP candidate for the Saskatoon-Humboldt constituency.
She joins a growing list of past and present farm leaders vying to become MPs.
Canadian Beef Export Federation president Ted Haney and former Keystone Agricultural Producers president Don Dewar are seeking Liberal nominations in Calgary and Manitoba, while former Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association president Ted Menzies is running for the Conservatives in Alberta.
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Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen failed in his attempt to secure the Liberal nomination in the Manitoba riding of Brandon-Souris.
Wiebe isn’t surprised so many farm leaders want to go to Ottawa, saying they know how important federal agriculture policy is and they want the opportunity to shape and influence it.
If she wins the NDP nomination and is elected to government, her priority will be to promote ecologically and socially sustainable family farms.
“In this riding as in other ridings there’s a real struggle going on in terms of the viability of smaller-sized farms,” said Wiebe.
She said the devastating impact of the BSE crisis signals a need to revise agricultural policy to focus on family farms and domestic markets.
“Our market has been skewed so much in favour of massive production and export that when the border shuts we really go into a deep economic downturn.”
Wiebe resides in the Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar electoral district, which has already selected an NDP candidate, so she is running in Sask-atoon-Humboldt where she works as an ethics professor at St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon.
The incumbent is former Canadian Alliance MP Jim Pankiw, who is now sitting as an independent.
NDP candidates in Saskatoon-Humboldt have finished second to the incumbent in the last two federal elections. Pankiw won the 1997 campaign by a slim margin but his victory in 2000 was a landslide. He garnered 44 percent of the vote while his closest competitor had 26 percent.
Shortly after his latest win, Pankiw left the Canadian Alliance party with other dissident MPs and later was denied readmission to the party caucus. He was also at the centre of numerous controversies in the 2003 Saskatoon mayoral election, where he finished third with nearly 23 percent of the vote.
Wiebe said her work as a social activist will give constituents a clear choice in the riding.
“We find Jim Pankiw misrepresenting our views on some key issues – human rights, aboriginal rights and social justice issues.”
If she wins the March 5 nomination vote for her party and goes on to victory in the riding, Wiebe said she will quit her job at St. Andrew’s College.
“I’d step down from the job but I don’t step away from the ethics. Let’s make that very clear,” she said with a laugh.
