John Knubley, a 29 year veteran of the federal public service, took over the reins last week as chief bureaucrat at Agriculture Canada, one of the country’s oldest and largest federal departments.
The 57-year-old with a collection of degrees earned at prestigious foreign universities, but little agriculture policy experience, began his tenure with a July 2 message to employees that claimed some rural connection. He officially started the job the previous day.
“I am eager to grow my rural roots,” he wrote. “I have played my part in agricultural issues over the years in the public service and like many other Canadians, I was fortunate enough to have worked on my grandfather’s farm (purebred Herefords) in my youth.”
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Knubley described his new job as “joining a dynamic department that is so at the heart of Canada’s past and future.”
And although he has had no direct experience managing agricultural files during his bureaucratic career, he said he recognizes that the department and the industry it serves are crucial to Canada’s future as it was to its past.
“I know this department possesses a strong tradition and a proud history,” he wrote. “Looking to the future, I see our modern food supply chain as central to Canada’s recovery and long-term prospects.”
This week, Knubley will be able to put to good use his history of jobs that revolve around federal-provincial relations.
He will be in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., July 8-10 for the annual summer meeting of federal, provincial and territorial agriculture ministers, where the hog industry meltdown and fears of a prairie drought will be high on the agenda.
Knubley’s last job was as deputy minister for intergovernmental affairs in the Privy Council Office, the central bureaucratic support staff for the prime minister’s office.
Over the past three decades, he has worked for the Economic Council of Canada, had several different stints in federal-provincial relations, acted as assistant deputy minister in Human Resources Development Canada, managed science at Natural Resources Canada and for four years, he was vice-president for Nova Scotia of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
He earned degrees from Harvard University, Yale University, Oxford University and the European Institute of International Relations.
