On a once-empty wall in his Ottawa office in Parliament Hill’s historic West Block building, the rookie MP for Macleod, Alta., has a huge, 1.5 x 1.5 metre close-up photograph of wheat stalks.
“It’s perfect, it’s appropriate,” Ted Menzies said when he first saw the giant print. “I have the perfect wall for it. This is where I come from.”
Last week, the former president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association and the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance was settling in as a new Conservative MP. Besides setting up his office and hiring staff, he met the Liberal minister he will be responsible for keeping on her toes – international development minister Aileen Carroll.
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“I told her I would work with her and co-operate when possible, although there will days when I will hold her to account when I think it is necessary.”
He has been a farmer for 30 years and a conservative, anti-Canadian Wheat Board, pro-free trade farm politician for many of those years.
But two months after his June 28 election in a solidly Conservative riding south of Calgary and after a first caucus meeting and work to set up constituency and Ottawa offices, Menzies is quick to concede he has graduated to a higher political league.
What seemed an irritant from the outside that could easily be fixed with decisive political action now seems more complicated as he moves closer to the inside.
“I guess even after this short time that what I’ve learned is it’s going to be a lot tougher than I thought to make a difference,” he said in an Aug. 26 interview. “It’s going to be a cumbersome piece of machinery to move along. It is a complicated system.”
Officially, Menzies is Conservative critic for international development and he brings to the assignment a certainty that the best way to help poor countries develop is to make it easier for them to trade.
He is a strong advocate of a World Trade Organization deal that reduces protection, tariffs and agricultural subsidies, including in Canada, while increasing trade opportunities.
Unofficially, he is part of the Conservative party agricultural team that will be demanding more action from the Liberals. Last week, he was part of a Conservative caucus conference call on BSE.
“We are very frustrated that nothing is being done by the government and the crisis and pressure is definitely growing for producers,” said the MP. “We are going to be seeing casualties growing.”
As a rookie MP with solidly pro-free trade and anti-protection credentials from his days as a farm leader, Menzies raised a few farm lobby eyebrows with his decision to hire Emma Welford as his executive assistant and principal Parliament Hill aide.
She was an assistant to the Progressive Conservative party before it disappeared in a deal with the Canadian Alliance last year. For the past several years, she has been working as an Ottawa lobbyist for the supply managed industries.
Menzies said that Welford’s knowledge of the supply-managed side of agriculture will be helpful because “it’s not a sector I’m too familiar with” but mainly he hired her for her political experience and connections.
When the new Parliament first sits Oct. 4, the former southern Alberta grain farmer will be in his seat, soaking up the moment and the history. At some point, he will rise for his first speech or his first question in the chamber that has echoed with the voices of prime ministers Macdonald and Laurier, Borden, King, Diefenbaker and Trudeau.
“I’m sure I’ll be nervous the first time I have to speak, but right now, I don’t have any fears. They’re masked by excitement.”
