It was a brash, cocky and perhaps na•ve way for the newly appointed deputy agriculture minister to start his on-the-job training.
On April 26, 2000, just 16 days after being named the new chief federal agriculture bureaucrat, Samy Watson dropped into the head office of Keystone Agricultural Producers in Winnipeg to meet president Don Dewar.
The 42-year-old neophyte to agriculture policy told the farm leader that things were going to change back in Ottawa.
“Watson talked about developing a 10-year strategy plan because he feels that a lot of resources Ð both money and people Ð are being invested in agriculture, yet they are being developed in a vacuum because there is no direction,” Dewar reported in the May 2000, KAP newsletter.
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It was not news well received in Ottawa. Minister Lyle Vanclief, who had spent three years at the head of the department, was not amused at this apparent vote of non-confidence from the new kid on the block.
Watson is reported to have gone ballistic, showing perhaps for the first time the abrasive temper he later became famous for inside the department. He wanted to know where the story originated.
“He apparently wasn’t too pleased,” Dewar recalled.
“He never personally confronted me, but then I’ve never had another meeting with him either. Maybe there’s a connection.”
In the year since, Watson has made his mark, for good or ill.
His 10-year strategy appears to be in the works, broadly reflected in the federal government’s drive to move “beyond crisis management” and to include “life sciences” potential as a core future opportunity.
He has encouraged — some say demanded — the rest of the department, provinces and the farm community to think beyond immediate farm income issues.
He has brought a new management style to a department accustomed to the low-key style of previous deputy minister Frank Claydon. Some call it cajoling, some call it bullying and others call it inspired.
According to a story told in the department’s research branch, Samy called division heads in shortly after he took over to have them explain their operations. Research assistant deputy minister Brian Morrissey outlined his division.
Replied Watson: “The research branch has a great management style– for the 1950s.”
Within six months, Morrissey took early retirement and moved to British Columbia, part of an exodus of established managers.
As he had throughout his rapid ascent through the federal public service, Watson has made both friends and enemies.
“He has made a lot of changes and people get nervous about that,” said Brigid Rivoire, executive secretary of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture who was a senior communications manager at Agriculture Canada when Watson arrived.
“I think he brought a clear vision of where he wanted to take agriculture and how it could gain a greater profile around the cabinet table. I think he has pushed that through and made the department a different, better place.”
Inside the department, a senior manager who has converted from skeptic to fan said Watson came in “determined to stop agriculture looking like a basket case to the rest of the government. He may be succeeding.”
That’s where the skeptics come in.
Liberal MPs, provincial ministers and some farm leaders worry that by trying to convince government that agriculture is not just a problem, Watson is pushing a policy that ignores existing problems.
Fourteen months after Watson told Dewar that he wanted a 10-year plan, the KAP president remains unconvinced it is a good thing.
“I think Samy was put into the department to do the bidding of the prime minister and he is doing that to the detriment of agriculture,” Dewar said.
“I don’t think there’s a bureaucrat in Ottawa who is working for farmers. He is part of that.”
