Where an election campaign announcement is made can sometimes be as meaningful as what the announcement is about.
Political planners carefully select announcement sites for the message they send.
Prime minister Jean Chrétien’s handlers needed a farm as a background when they decided to get him involved in announcing the agricultural policy framework almost a decade ago.
They chose a farm south of Ottawa as the site and then suddenly realized it was, among other things, a hog farm.
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A frantic call to farmer Geri Kaman asked if the farm stank. Nope.
The announcement went ahead.
Events are planned to the moment, the background, the smell, the message of the site.
In election campaigns, the location indicates areas that are targets for party support. Multicultural support programs are not announced in Biggar, Sask., nor are prairie-directed announcements released in St. John’s, NL.
Prime minister Stephen Harper unveiled the Conservative platform in a Toronto suburban city, part of the 905 belt where the party hopes for gains. The message was clear: we care enough about your region that this is where we come to launch our campaign.
So what is to be read into where the Conservatives chose to talk about rural and agricultural policy?
Harper paid his first campaign visit to Saskatoon April 15, almost two-thirds through the election.
The party holds 13 of 14 Saskatchewan seats, all of them with some rural or agricultural presence, yet agriculture and rural affairs were not themes in his speech.
In fact, the party has made all of its rural and agricultural announcements in rural Quebec and Ontario.
Harper announced his pledge to abolish the gun registry on a farm in southwestern Ontario.
He talked about the party promise to attract health professionals to rural Canada In Victoriaville, Que., and first talked about the platform’s agricultural promises on a Quebec farm.
A stable majority Conservative government will create a five-year national farm and food strategy to guide Canadian agricultural policy and ensure the survival of family farms, he said.
“Canadian farmers compete in the global market – and for good reason since our produce is the best in the world,” he said
“That is why a national Conservative government will be proud to support our farmers and to provide access to new markets for produce grown throughout rural Canada.”
He said a stable national Conservative majority is needed to defend rural interests.
It is not an accident that the Conservative rural message is aimed at Quebec and Ontario and not the Prairies.
Some rural Ontario seats are at play and the party has to hold its base.
In Quebec, the Conservatives hope to expand their base of 11 seats, most of them rural. It is a voter base, now dominated by the Bloc Québécois, that Tories hope can produce at least a modest harvest.
So they lavish attention on potential supporters similar to how the biblical father lavished attention and a feast on the prodigal son while the stay-at-home stalwart seethed in the background.
There is no evidence that prairie rural areas are seething, but the election choices certainly make it look as if they are being taken for granted.
