Western Producer staff
It was getting toward the end of a Commons agriculture committee meeting when Reform MP Leon Benoit had heard enough. For more than an hour, MPs from the three parliamentary parties had been offering their ideas of what topics the committee should consider in the weeks ahead.
There were proposals for studies into trade rules, government support programs, environmental regulations, transportation subsidies and other government programs.
Benoit, who in his successful campaign to win the Vegreville riding argued against the record of both Liberal and Conservative governments as too interventionist, thought his fellow committee members were missing the point.
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Any attempt to plan what the committee should do had to be preceded by a more fundamental decision.
“It is important to have a debate about what the relationship between government and farmers should be,” he told the committee. He proposed that MPs consider that question first.
No one from the Liberal majority or the Bloc QuŽbecois responded.
In this new Parliament, where civility and co-operation have been the order of the day, it was a fascinating glimpse at the ideological tensions beneath the surface.
For the Liberals and the BQ, it was almost as if they did not understand the point. Why would any politician come to Parliament Hill and question the government’s ability to help?
But of course, that’s what this Parliament is all about. Once the niceties wear off and the political trench warfare begins, both opposition parties will be doing just that.
The BQ, of course, wants to break up the country. The party has made it clear the role of Quebec separatists in Ottawa is to show how inequitable the federal system has been for Quebec and why it should be ended.
Meanwhile, many Reformers, particularly the Alberta wing of the caucus, were elected to question government itself — not just particular programs but government as an overriding influence in society and the economy. Some come at it from the deficit point of view. Others attack the question from the particular program point of view. All say that government should be cut to the minimum.
Benoit, as a prominent agricultural spokesman for the party, believes that all government rules and regulations should be questioned, that institutions like the Canadian Wheat Board should not have monopolies, and that farmers should be left alone to do what they do best.
It will not be a majority view in this Parliament but Reform will increasingly force examination of what has been seen as the Canadian consensus that an activist government has a place in society.
Benoit could not understand how politicians could plan debates without first figuring out what their goal is.
“I think we have to begin at the beginning,” he said after the meeting. “The biggest issue is too much government, getting government off farmers’ backs.”
It is a position that will become one of the familiar battle lines of the current 35th Parliament.
