New federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has sent a clear signal that he wants to strengthen his party’s relevance to agricultural and rural Canada.
“I know how much work the Liberal party and I have to do to rebuild in rural Canada and to earn back the trust of Canadian farmers and farm families,” he said in a Feb. 25 speech to the annual meeting of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
Though he mentioned his youthful time on an uncle’s dairy farm in Richmond, Que., Ignatieff’s main message to the farmers is that he is serious about developing better policies and consulting farmers to do that.
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“I’m not just passing through,” he told one delegate who thanked him for making time to attend the convention, a rarity for an opposition leader.
“You are far too important an industry for me not to give you lots and lots of time. I will be back.”
In fact, he devoted significant time to listening to farmers last week.
On Feb. 23, a delegation of leaders from agricultural export sectors spent more than an hour with Ignatieff in his office while he listened to their issues.
On Feb. 25, before his CFA speech, he met privately with the leaders of all CFA member organizations.
And after his speech, he circulated among the delegates.
For all the advice he received in those meetings, Ignatieff offered few concrete policy ideas.
He said he supports compensating farmers for the environmental goods and services they produce.
“That’s one party convinced and three more to go,” Keystone Agricultural Producers president Ian Wishart said later.
Ignatieff confirmed his support for supply management and for Canada’s “balanced” position at the World Trade Organization.
He was critical of U.S. country-of-origin labelling rules, telling the meeting he had made a strong pitch to American president Barack Obama on the need for open trade.
“I made it very clear we have an integrated economy and none more than agriculture,” Ignatieff told Canadian Pork Council president Jurgen Preugschas. “It’s crazy for them to start shutting down this vital part of the industry.”
When asked what strategy he would propose to help protect Canadian livestock export interests, Ignatieff said he would organize a stronger lobby effort to convince Congress and the Obama administration not to become more protectionist. He would also step up efforts to promote exports through the federal government and through embassies and would direct government investment to increase slaughterhouse capacity in Canada.
In a speech the next morning, federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz told the CFA that Ignatieff was essentially recommending things the Conservative government is already doing.
“They say imitation is the highest form of flattery and it’s nice to know that everyone else thinks we are on the right track.”
Then he poked fun at the Liberal leader and his “roots in Canadian agriculture. I understand he was a youth delegate for Pierre Trudeau in 1968 before he left Canada for Harvard and Oxford, and I understand they have great agricultural programs at those two schools.”
