Last week, 30 farmers and food industry players involved in an 18-month agriculture leadership program saw a side of Ottawa’s political process they were not expecting.
The Canadian Agriculture Lifetime Leadership group was on Parliament Hill to talk about agriculture policy and politics with MPs and senators.
Instead, they were treated to a display of the politics of language and the French-English divide that seems to infect most political debates in the country.
CALL, partially funded by Agriculture Canada, is intended to expose the participants to issues in the food industry and to teach them leadership and decision-making skills.
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The group includes Saskatchewan Wheat Pool vice-president Marvin Shauf, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association Saskatchewan vice-president Sheldon Cooper, prominent Alberta dairy producer Bruce Beattie and farmers or farm bureaucrats from across Canada.
After a trip to Washington, D.C., they were in Ottawa last week to find out about the Canadian political decision-making system.
But when they got to a Commons agriculture committee meeting March 12, the questions turned to why it was an English-only program.
Bloc QuŽbecois MP Jean-Guy ChrŽtien noted there are only three from Quebec in the group. He wondered if Quebeckers are not interested or if they were not encouraged to take part.
Scott McLean of the University of Saskatchewan, CALL program manager, said the English-only nature of this first pilot program may have deterred some potential Quebec candidates. “They would have to be bilingual.”
When ChrŽtien protested federal dollars being spent on an English-only program, he was assured the problem is being fixed.
Terry Murray, head of the Canadian Farm Business Management Council, which sponsors the CALL program, said a French-only program will be organized next year to run parallel to the English program. However, it might have to offer different experiences to take into account the need to conduct visits and seminars, and to make contacts, in French.
Agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief last week announced the department will give $125,000 to help create the French program.
But that did not satisfy Liberal MP Denis Coderre, who angrily said he plans to complain to the Commons official languages committee that federal dollars are being spent on programs which reinforce the language divide.
Pay for translator
He said the solution is to create a program that includes both French and English-speaking farmers, with translation if necessary. If it requires more funding to pay for translation, he would fight for it.
“I don’t want us to get rid of an extraordinary idea,” he said.
Murray pleaded for time, arguing that the goal is to build a program that acts as a bridge. The answer is to work at it, rather than a “30-second sound bite,” he said.
The current effort is the first attempt to create a program designed to develop the next generation of farm leaders.
