Former federal agriculture minister Bob Speller says he is being pressured to try a political comeback in the next election.
In an interview April 28, he didn’t sound as if too much arm-twisting would be required.
“I’m considering it, definitely,” said Speller, president of the Ottawa-based printing company St. Joseph’s Print Solutions. “Obviously, there is a lot of work still to be done for the agricultural industry.”
He said he has received calls from across the country urging him to run again.
“The prime minister certainly wants me to run.”
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However, 49-year-old Speller also acknowledged it would be an uphill fight to reclaim the Ontario riding that he held for 16 years.
He lost the seat a year ago to Diane Finley, now the Conservative agriculture critic, by 1,600 votes after winning by almost 5,000 votes in 2000.
He first won the traditionally Conservative constituency in 1988 and held it through three more elections as a backbencher, only to lose it eight months after being appointed to cabinet.
“I will go in as the underdog if I go back in,” he said. “But I have been the underdog before, in 1988.”
While Speller is musing about a political comeback, a number of veteran rural MPs are announcing plans to retire as election preparations intensify in all parties and speculation grows about an election call within weeks.
Grain farmer Charlie Penson of Peace River, Alta., is retiring after 12 years as the Reform, Alliance and Conservative MP. In British Columbia, Abbotsford MP Randy White, a sharp critic of federal handling of the avian influenza outbreak last year, is stepping down.
And in Ontario, 17-year Liberal veteran Jerry Pickard, who likes to boast that his Chatham-Kent-Essex riding in southwestern Ontario produces more agricultural goods than most provinces, is set to retire. A 7,000-vote victory in 2000 shrunk to 400 votes as the Conservatives staged a strong campaign.
Other veteran rural Ontario Liberals facing tough re-election prospects also are expected to retire.
If he runs, Speller suggests he will try to make an issue of the fact that while Finley is the party agriculture critic, she does not sit as a permanent member of the House of Commons agriculture committee where much of the Commons agricultural work is done and has rarely attended the committee.
He also said his defeat last year left work undone.
“There is a lot of unfinished business that I started,” he said. “They are still talking about the Speller report (a 2002 Liberal task force on agriculture chaired by Speller) and I was in the process of implementing that.”
