After nine years of stable uncontested leadership under former Manitoba farmer Bob Friesen, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture could face a race to replace him this winter between two candidates from Eastern Canada.
Former Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett, currently CFA second vice-president, confirmed last week he will be running when the CFA meets in Ottawa in late February for its annual meeting.
First vice-president and former Quebec farm leader Laurent Pellerin said he also is considering a run for the presidency. If elected, he would be the first Quebec president after decades of having a Quebec farm leader as first vice-president.
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“I have been consulting across Canada, as well as in Quebec and I will decide by the middle of January,” he said Dec. 17.
Pellerin, a former president of the Union des Producteurs Agricoles in Quebec, is a popular speaker at CFA-affiliate meetings because of his passionate defence of marketing boards, the Canadian Wheat Board and farmer market power. He spoke in autumn to the annual meeting of the Agricultural Producers’ Association of Saskatchewan.
Bonnett also has a national profile and defeated Saskatchewan’s Marvin Shauf last year in an election for second vice-president. Support from the UPA delegation was thought to be key to Bonnett’s victory.
He has visited farm groups across Canada and will be the guest speaker at the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers’ meeting in Edmonton in early January.
Pellerin said that the new CFA president will have to fight to make sure the federal government recognizes the financial problems in agriculture including an expected decline in exports to the United States as the recession deepens in the U.S. and consumers reduce their spending.
“This financial crisis in the world will hurt agriculture as it is hurting other sectors,” he said. “It is a matter of time. The impact will come in 2009 and government will have to be aware it isn’t just banks and housing that needs help.”
He said Ottawa often has neglected agriculture and has not developed a good strategy for promoting value-added food processing.
“We will have to be sure the government knows our problems and our needs.”
Prairie farm leaders last week said they are not ready to line up behind any of the potential candidates.
“We will go down as a group and listen and take our time to decide,” said WRAP president Humphrey Banack. “I think both would be good leaders.”
There was no concern that the leadership of the CFA, Canada’s largest farm lobby, will move from a prairie farmer to someone from the East.
“I don’t think that’s terribly important,” said APAS president Greg Marshall. “There are regional issues and we are at the table and it is the president’s role to represent all the members.”
Pellerin and Bonnett have shared the duties of leading the CFA since Friesen stepped down in September to run unsuccessfully for the Liberals in the Oct. 14 election campaign.
That Liberal connection is an issue the new CFA leader will have to confront.
The governing Conservatives have made it clear they think the CFA was too close to the Liberals during Friesen’s presidency after he ran for a Liberal nomination in 2004 and several of the CFA staff or former staff members were identified as Liberal workers.
