Prime minister Stephen Harper last week appointed a second-term rural eastern Ontario MP to be parliamentary secretary to agriculture minister Gerry Ritz.
Named to the position was Pierre Lemieux, a 45-year-old former Canadian armed forces officer and project manager who represents a rural riding southeast of Ottawa.
He will represent the minister on the House of Commons agriculture committee, stand in for him during the House question period if Ritz is absent and represent the minister at agricultural events or conventions.
Although Lemieux’s Glengarry-Prescott-Russell riding is overwhelmingly rural and agricultural, he played little agricultural role in the last Parliament.
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He represents a riding that has been dominantly Liberal for more than a century.
In 2006, he won it for the Conservatives by little more than 200 votes. On Oct. 14, running against the son of longtime Liberal incumbent Don Boudria, he increased his victory margin to more than 5,500 votes.
Not since John Diefenbaker’s 1957 and 1958 victories have Conservatives won consecutive victories in the riding.
Appointment of parliamentary secretaries also returned two prominent prairie agricultural MPs to positions they held in the last Parliament.
Macleod MP Ted Menzies, formerly a wheat producer from Claresholm, Alta., and former president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association and the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, was reappointed parliamentary secretary to finance minister Jim Flaherty.
Southwestern Saskatchewan MP and Canadian Wheat Board monopoly opponent David Anderson was reappointed parliamentary secretary to the natural resources minister with responsibility for the CWB.
