MONTREAL – Since new Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, a Quebec academic, was largely mute on agricultural policy during the long leadership race that ended in triumph Dec. 2, it is left to his supporters to fill in the blanks.
A Dion agriculture plan is being worked on and will be released this winter, his advisers say.
According to them, it will include several key items:
- Support for the Canadian Wheat Board export monopoly. “Mr. Dion told me that if (prime minister Stephen) Harper destroys the board, he will reinstate it when he is in government and that will be an interesting development,” Saskatchewan farmer and Dion organizer David Orchard said Dec. 2.
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- Support from the former environment minister for organic farming and agriculture’s role in environmental policy, including embrace of a biofuel economy.
“Most farmers know there is a very strong link between agriculture and the environment,” Alberta Liberal party president and Camrose area farmer Adam Campbell said in a Dec. 4 interview.
“We are not tree huggers but practical environmentalists and Stéphane’s policy will reflect that.”
- Support for farmers’ need for government support when the farm economy is down.
“On farm safety nets and funding for farm support programs, he was always an ally at the cabinet table when I was asking for a new program or more money,” former agriculture and finance minister Ralph Goodale said Nov. 2 as he explained his decision to support Dion on the final ballot that propelled him to victory. “He always got it and I appreciated that.”
Goodale also said his experience with Dion is that he will not be a captive of the bureaucracy.
“I think what Stéphane will do is make a very genuine effort to reach out to farmers,” the Regina MP said.
“He will not be inclined to accept public policy, especially farm policy, that is entirely concocted in-house by the bureaucracy. It is not in his nature. He will ask what farmers want, what farmers think, what farmers need and he will get the answers directly for himself.”
Dion’s Dec. 2 fourth ballot victory was a convention shock. He entered the leadership race as a long shot since conventional wisdom was that after having Quebec leaders for 32 of the past 38 years, Liberals would want someone from English Canada. He entered the convention in fourth place.
He also is a scarred survivor of the Liberal Party civil war.
Dion was a Quebec academic and fervent federalist recruited in 1996 by former prime minister Jean Chrétien to lead the federalist forces after the near-referendum loss in 1995.
He became Chrétien’s intergovernmental affairs minister and chief opponent to the separatist forces, then fell out of favour when Paul Martin supporters pushed Chrétien out in 2003.
Dion was considered too much a Chrétien loyalist and Martin supporters tried to take his candidate nomination away for the 2004 election.
Dion fought back, kept his nomination, was one of the few Liberals to win in Quebec in 2004 and then was relegated to Martin’s back bench. Finally, he was promoted to cabinet as environment minister.
His convention victory came despite the fact that almost all of his Liberal caucus colleagues supported other candidates. He won when last-place candidate Martha Hall-Findlay and then fourth place finisher Gerard Kennedy moved to his camp and momentum grew.
Kennedy, with an agricultural and rural platform that called on Ottawa to increase its share of farm aid funding and to base farm aid programs on production costs, will be an influential member of Dion’s team.
Dion also will be aware of policy resolutions from the Liberal convention that call for a more aggressive federal farm support policy and an immediate cash injection of $3.66 billion into the farm economy, as well as creation of a separate federal ministry of rural affairs.
