WINNIPEG – Manitoba Conservative James Bezan said last week that the ability of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture to lobby the government has been undermined by perceived CFA ties to the Liberals.
During a Manitoba agriculture debate broadcast on radio Oct. 2, the chair of the House of Commons agriculture committee in the last Parliament said he had not been comfortable meeting with the CFA. 
Former CFA president Bob Friesen, now a Liberal candidate in a Winnipeg riding, represented the party in the debate. He ran unsuccessfully for a Liberal nomination in 2004.
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“He wore his Liberal colours on his sleeve,” said Bezan, running for re-election in the Selkirk-Interlake riding.
“I wasn’t comfortable, as chair of the standing committee on agriculture and agri-food, meeting with Bob or any of his employees because any message we were trading back and forth there would go right back to the Liberal Party of Canada.”
Friesen protested that he had nothing to do with the Liberals when he was CFA president for nine years until he quit to run in this election.
As well, he said Bezan’s accusation was an example of the Conservative style of “walking over” anyone who disagrees with them.
But Bezan persisted, insisting that CFA-Liberal ties included having staff “writing policy for the Liberal party.”
The exchange brought into the open an issue that had simmered since the Conservatives took power in early 2006 and faced criticism from former Liberal campaigner Friesen.
After the first Conservative budget in 2006 drew CFA criticism, then-agriculture minister Chuck Strahl brushed it off with the quip that his purpose “is not to make Bob Friesen happy anyway, frankly.”
Then he unloaded. “When he’s happy, I’m happy for him, but on the other hand he has a political agenda as well as a farm agenda and when he gets political, I’m less interested in what he has to say.”
Later in 2006 when then-CFA communications director Kieran Green wrote an agriculture policy paper for the Liberal party national convention, Strahl was even more explicit.
“Folks in my caucus are not going to say, ‘let’s listen to this guy even though he’s working to defeat us in the next election,’ ” Strahl said.
“I have a lot of time for the CFA when they are dealing with small ‘p’ policy. I also have told them in the past that when they slip into big ‘P’ politics, it takes away from their legitimacy.”
In this election campaign, former CFA executive director Justin To is also working on the Liberal campaign after doing contract work for agriculture critic Wayne Easter.
Last week, Friesen said the accusation reflects the Conservative attitude toward dissent. As CFA president, he listened to his farmer members and then carried their message to the government of the day whatever its political stripe.
“This current government, if you are critical of them or if you disagree with them, they slam the door shut,” he said during the debate.
In an earlier interview in his Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia riding in west-end Winnipeg, Friesen said while his riding is overwhelmingly urban, his experience as a farm leader was good training for his first run at federal electoral politics.
“I tell people that I know the machinery of government in Ottawa after years working there on behalf of farmers,” he said.
“And I tell people I will be taking their message to Ottawa just as I did for farmers during nine years as CFA president.”
While the main issues in his riding are health care, child care, seniors’ issues and infrastructure, he said the Canadian Wheat Board issue also comes up.
“There is a real understanding of how the economy of the city would be affected if the CWB is decimated,” Friesen said.
“And people are aware that the tactics the government has used against the wheat board reflect (prime minister Stephen) Harper’s modus operandi of bullying to get his way.”
In his campaign, the former CFA president is getting help from old farm organization hands.
Former CWB executive Brian White is campaign manager and former Manitoba Farm Bureau director Bob Douglas is actively involved.
