Gary Doer is done with the top job in Manitoba.
While one farm group is glad to be done with him, others are hoping his big new job lets him keep doing.
“They didn’t ignore rural issues,” said Keystone Agricultural Producers president Ian Wishart about Doer’s 10 years as premier, noting his support for environmental programs like those KAP has championed.
“They may have given us a lot of rules, but do you think in the last 10 years we wouldn’t have ended up with them anyway?”
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Doer announced Aug. 27 that he was going to step down as premier as soon as the New Democratic Party can replace him. Prime minister Stephen Harper announced Aug. 28 that Doer would be Canada’s next ambassador to the United States
The cattle producers association also feels Doer focused on some issues that are important to them.
“We’re relatively pleased with the job he’s done in the last few years,” said Manitoba Cattle Producers Association president Joe Bouchard.
“The environmental push fits right into line with what the cattle people’s ecological goods and services plan is all about.”
But hog producers feel differently.
Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch would not say a word about Doer’s record.
“I really don’t want to go down that path,” said Kynoch, refusing further comment.
Many hog producers feel Doer turned his back on the industry and is allowing it to die through lack of attention.
Doer and his government embraced the OlyWest hog packing proposal when it was announced, but grew quiet as neighbourhood opposition developed around the project and went almost silent when the party’s green base helped make it a controversy.
In 2008, Doer’s government ignored the recommendations of the Clean Environment Commission, which it had appointed to investigate the hog industry’s impact of water quality, and passed Bill 17, which banned new hog barn development in the Red River Valley.
Wishart said that bill will permanently taint the memory of Doer in many farmers’ minds.
“I think that one will be hard to get away from. It was a mistake. It’ll haunt him for some time,” said Wishart, speculating that Doer didn’t personally dislike the hog industry.
“It was the political reality, to satisfy some of the more extreme environmentalists within the party.”In the current hog crisis, the province has made aid money available, but Doer’s government has made little comment on the situation.
However, both Wishart and Bouchard said they believe Doer will now be in a great position to help hog and cattle producers from inside Washington.
“We’re hoping with his new appointment that he can provide a lot of influence on that level to make beneficial changes for producers,” said Bouchard.
“They’ve been working hard on our behalf on the trade front, as well as with country-of-origin labelling.”
COOL requires meat in the U.S. to be identified by its originating country. That has led American packers to discount animals they buy from Canada.
Wishart said Doer’s legacy will probably be seen in the environmental protection focus of his government, and in its willingness to work with producer groups like his.
KAP has pushed the Alternative Land Use Services program as a way for government to offer incentives to farmers to protect vulnerable land and water, and Doer offered moral support, while not yet adopting the program for the province.
“He gave us the impression that when we got it put together, that they would find the money for their share of it,” said Wishart.
“If he had a particular mark, it was all of the environmental things that have changed, both rural and urban.”
