When Lyle Vanclief received a mid-June telephone call from an old friend, it left the former federal agriculture minister in tears.His friend, a member of the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame, was tipping Vanclief off that he was about to join the exclusive group.“It’s hard to put in words what that meant to me,” he said in a June 25 interview. “I’m not embarrassed to say tears were running down my face.”He was federal minister for more than six years, 1997-2003, during tumultuous times in agriculture and agriculture policy making, including the 1998-99 hog industry meltdown, money losing years in the grain industry, the BSE catastrophe in the cattle industry and the controversial launch of new World Trade Organization talks in 2001.He also led federal-provincial negotiations that produced the controversial 2001 agricultural policy framework.Cam Dahl, a commissioner at the Canadian Grain Commission and vice-president of the CAHF, said the board accepted Vanclief as a member because as minister, Vanclief changed Canadian agricultural policy, as well as industry perceptions and expectations.Dahl spent his first years on Parliament Hill watching Vanclief from an opposition vantage point as a political aide to Reform agriculture critic Howard Hilstrom after 1997.“There was a view around the (CAHF) table that the perspective of agriculture changed under his mandate with more of an emphasis on farmers having a business model and developing an economically viable model for agriculture,” Dahl said from Winnipeg. “I think there was a change in attitude about farming as a business. The APF was part of it but it was broader than that.”Vanclief said the APF came about because he was convinced he could not continually go back to cabinet looking for dollars for farm aid because of crises.The APF was meant to create legislated programs that would pay out when conditions warranted, without cabinet approval.Vanclief said one of his goals as minister was to create a farm sector mentality that embraced good business planning on the farm and did not assume reliance on aid.Ironically, the APF promise to move farm programming “beyond crisis management” was quickly overwhelmed by farm need that forced Vanclief to make regular announcements of large farm aid payments beyond APF payments.But despite the billions of dollars that he extracted from federal coffers for farmers, his time as minister was controversial and farm lobbyists often criticized him as ineffective.Once when he appeared before the Canadian Federation of Agriculture to announce a $500 million emergency payment to farmers, several delegates said he should resign for failing to get $1 billion.Vanclief cheerfully acknowledged the controversies last week. Part of the induction into the Hall of Fame during the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto Nov. 7 will be the unveiling of a portrait.“Now the critics can use that as a target to shoot at and they won’t have to burn me in effigy,” he said.He joins former ministers Eugene Whelan and Charlie Mayer in the Hall of Fame.
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