It was not an auspicious beginning to a lobby effort. Norman Lafreniere felt like hell and did not look much better.
It was Oct. 31, 1996, and the Ottawa-based lobbyist for the private mutual insurance industry was on Parliament Hill to unveil a radical idea: Private companies should be allowed into the core crop insurance business.
“First of all, I’d like to say that I’m sorry for the way I look,” the president of the Canadian Association of Mutual Insurance Companies told MPs on the Commons finance committee. “I was operated on last week and I have some bad effects from it.” Apologies over, Lafreniere moved on to his real chore.
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He wanted to plant the idea that the government monopoly on providing basic crop insurance should be broken, while keeping government subsidies to the system. It could be a lucrative source of new business for his member companies.
It would not be an easy sell. During the 30 years governments have operated basic crop insurance, there has been no audible farmer demand for private delivery of the program.
If anything, the thought of private companies and the profit motive in crop insurance could raise farmer unease about higher premiums, two-tier service and patchwork standards.
Without detail, Lafreniere used this first day merely to introduce the idea that governments have unfairly excluded the private sector from a potentially lucrative business and in the process, created inefficiency. The first goal was to plant the seed of an idea that an old policy should be re-examined.
“That was the day we began our campaign,” he recalls.
It was not an instant sensation. MPs appeared disinterested and several of the farm lobbyists present in the room were privately skeptical of the idea.
Yet less than a year later, on Oct. 6, 1997, Lafreniere was in an audience of private insurance representatives to witness the first public flowering of his idea.
Agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief opened the door, inviting the industry to find a province willing to experiment with a private pilot project. “At Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, we are very open to new ways of doing business.”
It was music to Lafreniere’s ears.
“Mr. Vanclief said exactly what we wanted to hear.”
What had moved the government in just 11 months? In part, it was Lafreniere’s continuing efforts to tap into the government’s privatizing mood. “I did not work full-time on this, obviously, but I did what I could to put it on the agenda.”
And in part, it was a behind-the-scenes campaign by individual insurance companies to convince politicians there was money to be saved and a more efficient way to deliver a farm safety net program. Letters to MPs and Senators urged them to consider the private sector option and noted its success in the United States.
The campaign paid off.
“We were waiting for a sign of interest,” said Lafreniere. “That is what we have received and we move to the next phase of proving ourselves.”
Chalk up another success for the kind of skillful political lobbying that turns also-ran ideas into policy proposals.
