Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Laurent Pellerin has a message for critics who complain that Canadian farm leaders are too easy on the Conservative government.
“We don’t have to play the same role as opposition parties,” he said.
“They have a job to do criticizing the government. We are not a political party. It is our job to work with government.”
Liberal MP Wayne Easter has repeatedly complained that the Conservatives and agriculture minister Gerry Ritz have intimidated farm leaders into silence.
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At one point, he said he would quit asking critical questions because he receives no public support from farm leaders.
Pellerin said the mindset and the methods of the farm movement in Canada are changing. In part, it is because younger producers who are getting involved in farm organizations do not come from the era of rallies and confrontation with politicians.
“I do think farmers are changing in this country, the mindset about how to get results is changing,” said the veteran of decades of farm organization activism, first in Quebec and then nationally.
“I certainly have been part of and organized many rallies and demonstrations, but I think farmers today are looking for a more equal and collaborative relationship with politicians.”
Pellerin said the farm lobby landscape began to change in 2001 when governments introduced stable funding through the agricultural policy framework.
It reduced the need for farmer rallies to call for ad hoc funding and instead turned attention to working with government to make farm program rules more farmer-friendly.
“We need to work with government for medium and long-term rules and solutions,” he said. “We put less energy into looking for instant solutions because that is not very practical.”
As to criticism that farm leaders have fallen silent and are giving the Conservatives a free ride, Pellerin said that not so long ago, the Conservatives were criticizing the CFA for ties that some of its leaders and staff had with the Liberals.
In fact, during the last election campaign, when former long-time CFA president Bob Friesen was running as a Liberal candidate in Manitoba, Conservative James Bezan told him in a farm issues debate broadcast across the province that Liberal ties undermined the farm lobby’s ability to work with the new Conservative government.
“I wasn’t comfortable, as chair of the standing committee on agriculture and agri-food, meeting with Bob or any of his employees because any message we were trading back and forth there would go right back to the Liberal Party of Canada,” Bezan said.
Friesen denied the charge but it reflected government skepticism toward the organization, Canada’s largest farm lobby.
Ritz showed that hostility in his first speech to the CFA after becoming agriculture minister in 2007, telling delegates to the federation’s annual meeting in 2008 that he discounted the organization’s opinion on government efforts to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly because the CFA did not support the initiative.
Then he stormed out of the room without taking questions.
Last year’s appearance was friendlier and Pellerin said relations with the minister are better.
“It is important that we can work with him because there is one minister in the government dealing with our file and we are a small part of the population,” he said.
“That does not mean we are partisan. It means we are doing our job for farmers.”
