Samy Watson was one of the key architects of the agricultural policy framework that promised to move Canadian farmers “beyond crisis management” but has not been able to stem three years of record-low farm incomes.
Now, Watson will represent Canada and several other countries at an international organization created to reduce global poverty and to help poor countries develop their economies.
Watson, the controversial former Agriculture Canada deputy minister, has been nominated by the Conservative government to replace former Liberal minister Marcel Massé as executive director of the Washington-based World Bank, representing Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean.
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The World Bank, created in 1944 as a sister organization to the International Monetary Fund, has as an official goal to reduce global poverty by raising living standards and promoting sustainable development in developing countries.
Watson’s term in Washington, a two-year appointment that can be renewed, begins in October.
His appointment to the prestigious job was unexpected in political Ottawa because it was widely suggested he was not popular with the Conservative government nor with Kevin Lynch, Ottawa’s top civil servant as clerk of the privy council and essentially prime minister Stephen Harper’s deputy minister.
Shortly after the Conservatives took power, Watson lost his job as deputy minister at the environment department.
Rumours said he was identified by the government as too closely aligned with the Liberal climate change policy and adherence to the Kyoto Protocol that the Conservatives have rejected as unrealistic.
During his years as Agriculture Canada deputy minister, Watson earned a reputation among departmental staff and farm leaders as decisive and bright, but also as an abrasive bully who was not readily inclined to hear that his prescriptions for the industry were wrong.
