Senior Conservative MPs including agriculture minister Chuck Strahl said last week Canada’s largest farm lobby group risks undermining its credibility by allowing a senior staff member to help the opposition Liberal party draft an agriculture policy plan.
Kieran Green, communications co-ordinator for the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, was a member of a Liberal party task force on agricultural policy renewal and wrote its report that was published last week.
Green said his Liberal work had nothing to do with his day job at the CFA.
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“That’s extra-curricular, strictly on my own time,” he said.
CFA executive director Brigid Rivoire said Sept. 18 that Green worked on his own time and his work with the Liberals, like work for other parties by previous communications staff, has no bearing on his federation work.
“What Kieran does on his own time is his own business and his political affiliations have never been a factor in the performance of his job as CFA communications co-ordinator,” she wrote in an e-mail response. “Everyone is entitled to have a personal life. Everyone is entitled to a political preference. This is only an issue because you choose to make it one.”
Conservative MPs saw it differently.
“Folks in my caucus are not going to say, ‘let’s listen to this guy even though he’s working to defeat us in the next election,’ ” Strahl said.
“I have a lot of time for the CFA when they are dealing with small p policy. They do a lot of good work. I also have told them in the past that when they slip into big P politics, it takes away from their legitimacy.”
Strahl said Green’s role crossed the line when he put his name to Liberal material that claimed Liberal policy to be “far superior” to Conservative policy in many ways and accused the Conservative government of failing to “live up to its promise to support farmers.
“Any organization would know that when you cross the Rubicon into big P politics, you get pigeon-holed and that communications staffer is now in a box that’s called Liberal spin doctor,” said Strahl.
Manitoba Conservative MP James Bezan, a member of the Commons agriculture committee and a former staff member for the Manitoba Cattle Producers’ Association, also said the CFA risks losing credibility.
“As a former farm politics person myself, I have warned farm groups not to get too political because you have to work with all sides,” he said. “Even if it is a staffer rather than elected, it taints the organization out in the public eye and among farmers.”
He said it is unfortunate but it could lead him to look at CFA presentations, comparing them with Liberal policy “to decide if they are speaking for farmers or Liberals.”
Alberta MP Ted Menzies, a member of the Commons trade committee and former president of Western Canadian Wheat Growers’ Association, said the public link between a CFA staff member and the Liberals “certainly is going to bring into question the biases that may be built into their statements or who’s leading the agenda.”
Not everyone saw a problem.
Agriculture committee chair and Saskatchewan Conservative MP Gerry Ritz said it may lead to some public questions about bias, as happened when president Bob Friesen ran unsuccessfully for a Liberal nomination several years ago.
“But I still listen to Bob and it’s good to see people involved, whoever it’s with,” he said.
“Everyone’s allowed to have two lives.”
Liberal MP Wayne Easter, who sat on the task force with Green, said the Conservatives should not be so quick to divide people into friends and foes.
“What they should be looking for are the best ideas, wherever they’re from,” he said. “Kieran knows a lot about agriculture and he is a good writer. That’s why we were happy to have him involved.”
