Christine Moran, the new Ottawa face of the farmer lobby Grain Growers of Canada, starts her job with a simple yet complicated mission.
“My first priority is putting Grain Growers back on the Ottawa map,” she said during an interview in her office several blocks south of Parliament Hill. “It is to reacquaint people here with this organization.”
The five-year-old lobby group with member associations across the country has had a low profile in Ottawa for most of the past year as it searched for an effective representative in the capital. The office has been either empty or ineffectual.
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As well, Moran said that even as she tries to re-establish the Grain Growers profile in Ottawa, the organization is engaging in some reflection, trying to decide what type of an organization it wants to be in the future.
“I think we have some soul searching to do about where we want to go and what we want to be,” said Moran. “It is an important time.”
In its first five years, the group has taken a strong stand on the need for more liberalized world trade rules. It has also pressured the federal government to compensate grain and oilseed farmers for damages caused by price-depressing foreign subsidies, a trade injury calculated at more than $1.3 billion each year.
“But issues are evolving,” she said. “We need to see if our focus is the right one.”
The Ottawa-based executive director will be the point person to promote whatever priorities the group sets at its annual meeting in late November.
In September, the GGC board filled a months-long empty Ottawa office by hiring Moran, a 10-year veteran of the federal trade department with a year of political experience on Parliament Hill as well. In 2001-02, she took a leave of absence from the trade department to become an adviser on homelessness policy to federal cabinet minister Claudette Bradshaw.
More than a decade ago, she also spent time in South America working for a non-governmental aid and development group.
“I think those different experiences give me a broader perspective to bring to this job,” she said.
In the federal trade bureaucracy, Moran worked on technical issues such as sanitary and phyto-sanitary rules, the impact of the international biosafety protocol and trade restrictions on export of genetically modified food.
It was while working on these files that she first came in contact with Grain Growers of Canada. When it advertised for a new executive director over the summer, she thought it would be a good fit despite her lack of farm background.
“I think I bring an understanding of some of the technical issues, as well as some experience in the political system,” she said.
Moran readily concedes there is much to learn about domestic farm politics.
“Obviously, we want to be sure that all the APF (agricultural policy framework) pillars are implemented and that it is done in a way that benefits farmers,” she said.
“But at this point, there is much about the APF and the CAIS (Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program) that I do not understand and will need to learn about. At this point, I think it would be arrogant of me to suggest I have a personal view about agricultural policy and how it should be shaped.”
