Eugene Whelan last week said he agreed not to sue the former Progressive Conservative government when it fired him as an ambassador in 1984, in return for government support of Whelan’s role as chair of the World Food Council.
“It was a hell of a way to end a political career,” the former Liberal agriculture minister, and now senator, said March 11.
His firing as ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization by the new Tory government in 1984 has remained a burr under Whelan’s saddle for more than a dozen years.
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Not easily forgotten
He complained about it in his autobiography and raised it again last week in Ottawa when he spoke to a delegation of young future farm leaders who were meeting politicians as part of their program.
In June 1984, Whelan was appointed the first FAO ambassador by then-prime minister John Turner in return for his decision to dump Whelan as agriculture minister in his short-lived government of summer 1984. Whelan had run against Turner for the Liberal leadership.
The triumphant Tories used Whelan’s appointment as an example of unacceptable Liberal patronage. He was one of three high-profile Liberals fired from their jobs.
But he also was serving as president of the World Food Council at the time, a job normally reserved for serving national agriculture ministers.
The Tories privately told him they would let him serve out his WFC term if he did not protest his FAO firing by filing a court suit for wrongful dismissal, as did several other fired Liberal ambassadors.
Whelan said last week he agreed “because the Ethiopian famine was on and the food council position was an important part of the effort against it.”
