If there is strength in numbers, the Reform party clearly has decided to strengthen its parliamentary focus on agriculture.
When leader Preston Manning announced the party critics’ line-up for the new session of Parliament, which started Oct. 12, he designated five of his 59 MPs as agriculture spokespeople.
Manning also used the shuffle of critics to mete out punishment to caucus members who have been opposing his attempt to transform the Reform party into a broader, less western-oriented political party.
The main victim was southwest Saskatchewan Reform MP Lee Morrison, who lost his second row House of Commons seat and his job as party transportation critic.
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He now sits in the back row with no official critic duties. On the eve of a parliamentary debate on prairie grain transportation, once the government decides how to respond to the Kroeger report, new transport critic Val Meredith from British Columbia and southeast Saskatchewan deputy critic Roy Bailey do not have the background on the issue Morrison has developed.
“I will not be an official critic but I will still make my views known,” said Morrison, a vocal critic of Manning’s United Alternative proposal to unite Canada’s right-wing parties.
“I have never been shy.”
No surprise
Morrison said he was not shocked at news of the demotion, given his stance on Manning’s unite-the-right project.
“I can’t say I was surprised,” he chuckled. “If you kick a porcupine often enough, you get a quill or two stuck in you.”
On the agriculture front, part of the critics’ shuffle was required because anti-UA activist Jake Hoeppner was kicked out of caucus this summer and now sits as an “Independent Reform” MP. He was one of three agriculture critics in the last session.
Now, Manitoba’s Howard Hilstrom remains the main Reform agriculture critic.
He is joined by four associate critics – Garry Breitkreuz, Gerry Ritz and Roy Bailey from Saskatchewan and Rick Casson from southern Alberta.
Casson from Lethbridge, Alta., a former environment critic, will take the lead on issues such as endangered species legislation and greenhouse gas controls.
Bailey, from Souris-Moose Mountain, will be involved in transportation policy reform, since he also sits on the transport committee.
Ritz, a farmer from the Battlefords-Lloydminster riding, noted that one of his constituents is Canadian Wheat Board chair Ken Ritter, who ran against him in 1997 as a Progressive Conservative candidate.
