LIBERALS suddenly are dreaming of recapturing a rural Ontario seat they lost in 2004 when then-agriculture minister Bob Speller fell to Conservative Diane Finley.
And they are thanking agriculture minister Gerry Ritz for their glimmer of optimism in an otherwise grim Liberal political season.
Part of Finley’s appeal to voters in Haldimand-Norfolk was that the Liberals had not been supportive enough of struggling tobacco growers concentrated in the riding southwest of Hamilton. Conservatives would do better.
Producers were encouraged to make an unprecedented proposal to government: buy us out with revenue raised from a tobacco-product tax and we’ll close the industry down.
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Last week, the Conservative promises of help turned out to be false.
Ritz shocked tobacco leaders by calling them to Ottawa only to tell them he had no new money for a buyout and they should look to existing programs for exit help.
Liberals rushed to exploit it and tobacco farmers co-operated by staging a publicity stunt in the riding, ripping up Conservative signs and membership cards in front of Finley’s office before marching across the street to buy Liberal memberships.
It was a curious performance by Ritz, not so much the decision but the way the issue was handled.
The minister had said earlier that he was not interested in a quota buyout so that should not have been a surprise.
Presumably the deep thinkers in the government would have warned that any quota buyout in tobacco could set a precedent that would be seized on by dairy producers if a future World Trade Organization deal undermined the $20 billion in dairy quota now in the industry.
But why did Ritz consistently lead the industry to believe he had some aid package in mind?
In February, under questioning from a Liberal MP from a neighbouring riding, the agriculture minister was clear.
“I can assure the tobacco industry in southwestern Ontario that we will act in a far more substantive way than the Liberals ever did in 10 years,” he said. “Sooner rather than later.”
That seemed clear enough. What happened?
Perhaps he took an exit package to cabinet and was rejected. Perhaps he never really planned to help since fewer than 1,000 active farmers and several hundred non-farming quota holders were asking for a package that some in government said would be worth up to $1 billion.
But to tease the industry with promises of help at the expense of a sitting Conservative MP is just plain political weirdness.
Finley won in 2006 by more than 7,500 votes so defeat would be a major upset. Still, it doesn’t help.
And tobacco farmers can make the argument that they stayed in the business and invested in part because of government promises of support.
Besides, no other agricultural sector faces lost market share and collapsed demand because of a government campaign against the legal product and competition from illegal untaxed imports that the federal government seems powerless to stop or unwilling to tackle because it involves First Nations smugglers.
One way the Conservatives could have dealt with this and offered Finley some cover would have been to deal with it as health policy – co-operation between agriculture and health departments to close down an industry that produces an unhealthy product.
It missed its opportunity.
