Bob Friesen, one of the longest-serving Canadian Federation of Agriculture presidents in its 73-year history, was given an affectionate sendoff last week by the organization he led for almost a decade.
“You have done a great job for Canadian farmers,” said former CFA president and international farm leader Jack Wilkinson at a Feb. 24 dinner for Friesen, who stepped down last year to run unsuccessfully as a Liberal in Manitoba. “We drank hard together. We worked like hell together.”
With the Randy Bachman song Taking Care of Business filling the gaps between speeches, Friesen told the crowd his focus throughout his term had been simple.
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“Over the past 10 years, the message has been the same: farmers, farmers, farmers.”
Friesen, formerly a hog and turkey producer in Wawanesa, Man., who recently moved to Ottawa, led the CFA through some tumultuous years.
He dealt with the threats and promises of a decade of World Trade Organization negotiations.
He was CFA president through many farm crises including the hog industry meltdown in the late 1990s, BSE, prolonged grain sector losses and avian influenza in the chicken industry. Through that time, he was involved in pressuring a series of governments and ministers to respond with adequate programs and billions of dollars in farm aid.
He was a key farm player when the agricultural policy framework was negotiated in 2000-01 and stood with then prime minister Jean Chrétien as the APF was announced on a farm south of Ottawa in 2001. He stood with then-agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief when a BSE compensation program was announced in southern Alberta in 2003 and worked with today’s Conservative government in developing the Growing Forward policy framework announced last year.
Sally Rutherford, a former CFA executive secretary, said during the Friesen tributes that as an export-oriented hog producer and a turkey producer in supply management, he was the perfect promoter of the “balanced” Canadian agricultural trade position that includes tariff protection for trade sensitive sectors and a reduction in foreign import barriers for Canadian exporters.
But his public identification with the Liberal party was a problem in the last years of his CFA presidency when the Conservatives were in power.
First, he came out of the political closet in a failed bid to secure a southwestern Manitoba Liberal nomination in 2004 and then he ran as an unsuccessful Liberal candidate in Winnipeg in the last election.
Conservative ministers and MPs said the clear link between the CFA leadership and the Liberals undermined the CFA’s credibility in a Conservative Ottawa.
In his final CFA speech, Friesen highlighted former Liberal agriculture ministers Bob Speller and Andy Mitchell for praise.
Speller returned the favour by noting that while Friesen took flack for being Liberal leaning, it helped Liberal governments create farmer-friendly agriculture policy.
“You were seen by some as too close to the Liberals, but I can say that helped form better agriculture policy,” said Speller.
Since Friesen has lost a nomination contest and then an election campaign as an appointed Liberal candidate, Speller joked about a time when he told Friesen he should try electoral politics.
“Bob, I was only kidding,” he said to laughter.
Friesen has sold his Manitoba farm stake, moved to Ottawa and works on contract for Farmers of North America trying to win more eastern Canadian members for the organization.
