OH DEAR. Trying to get attention for agricultural issues on Parliament Hill is a tough challenge and Sept. 25 illustrated the point.
Imagine a news conference that promised to have the Liberals changing their position on child care, demanding that the Conservatives do more to support stay-at-home parents. Imagine a news conference that promised to see the Liberals swallow themselves whole by calling on the Conservatives to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
Parliament Hill would have been swarming with reporters ready to pounce. All-news television would have gone live.
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Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
So here it was, a scheduled news conference by Liberal leader Bill Graham introducing a rural caucus proposal that was an amazing about-face by the Liberals on agriculture policy. A plan imposed by Liberals in government over farmer objections should be largely ditched by the Conservatives, he said.
By the way, the price tag would be $1 billion annually or more.
A small collection of reporters gathered and there were cameras.
However, when Graham finished speaking and tried to turn the microphone over to agriculture critic Wayne Easter for the details, reporters pounced.
They were there to ask about allegations that Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe’s campaign had broken the rules by signing up members without their consent and in one case, after death.
Graham spent several minutes explaining that all would be investigated but really, this news conference was about a crisis in agriculture so let’s get the focus back on that issue.
Enter Easter and his details on a startling Liberal policy reversal. Reporters drifted away, working their Blackberries to see where the next incident in the Liberal leadership race scandals was taking place.
One lone reporter stayed to ask about the agricultural details.
Easter gamely tried to make a point to a largely uncaring audience.
“I know there are some sensational questions to be asked by the media in Ottawa but I’ll tell you about a real tragedy that many of the national media are not looking at and that’s the tragedy on the farm,” he began. “And it is a tragedy on the farm.”
Hey, Volpe is having a news conference in 15 minutes! Let’s get over there.
There is nothing new in the news that agriculture and rural Canada are below the radar screen for most media and politicians.
Two decades ago, more than half a dozen reporters versed in farm issues would have been at the news conference. In 2006, the Liberals attracted one reporter who cared.
Easter’s lament about national ignorance of the rural reality is bipartisan, echoed by Conservative senator Hugh Segal who was instrumental in launching a Senate study of rural poverty this week.
As a Kingston, Ont., based senator and an urbanite, he says he has been shocked by the lack of national focus on the crisis in rural Canada.
Mind you, it didn’t help the cause that downtown Toronto MP Graham, for the second time as opposition leader, mangled the message about the agricultural file.
The Liberal government had built policy around a successful World Trade Organization deal, he told reporters Monday, a deal “to reorganize the global structure of architecture.”
Agriculture is a tough sell on the Hill.
