IN HIS first parliamentary speech as Canada’s federal agriculture minister in late October, Gerry Ritz tried to put his first two months on the job in perspective.
“It is a dream come true at some times,” he told the House of Commons. “Other times, it is more of a nightmare. There are a lot of thorny issues that percolate around the agricultural sector in our great country, Canada.”
Indeed, while the new minister from Saskatchewan inherits the portfolio during a period of unprecedented grain prices and opportunity from ethanol industry demand, there are thorny issues galore.
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When one sector is up, another seems to be down so he faces a dilemma about how to react to a collapse of livestock sector income.
Commodity shippers want more government-directed protection from carriers.
He inherited some unfinished business involving federal-provincial negotiations on a new farm policy framework. He took on some incomplete Conservative business (obsession?) on how to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
And on the international trade front, he will preside late this year either over the suspension of World Trade Organization negotiations that will leave Canadian agricultural exporters angry and frustrated or a breakthrough in the talks that will put Canadian supply management protections in jeopardy.
These are challenges indeed but hardly a nightmare. Closer to a nightmare scenario might be if Ritz was being hounded and mauled by an aggressive, informed and credible opposition intent on exposing flaws in Conservative agriculture policies and performance and Ritz’s inexperience.
Instead, he has faced an opposition largely mute and invisible. That is not likely to change.
Veteran Liberal Wayne Easter has gamely tried to score some points, wondering on Nov. 2 why Ritz was “failing our country” by not producing a livestock support plan.
Easter is the only one who could lay a glove on him and Ritz is deft at bobbing and weaving to avoid direct hits. Most of the rest of the committee opposition MPs are not farmers and do not represent particularly agricultural areas.
A big part of the issue, and the reason why agriculture rarely is an opposition priority in Parliament, is that the vast majority of agricultural seats are held by Conservatives. These MPs may lob a few softball questions at the minister about how great the government is but there will be no grilling.
In a Parliament with a Conservative government holding a slim minority, the majority of agricultural voices are in that minority.
In Parliament, this phenomenon is most on display on Fridays, a day when most senior ministers skip question period and most A-team opposition questioners are away. Rarely heard backbench MPs get their moment to ask questions.
Through the 13 years of Liberal government, Friday question period often was agriculture time as Reform, Alliance and Conservative rural MPs asked their questions and got on record their criticisms of dastardly Liberal agriculture failures.
In this Parliament, Fridays no longer are agriculture days. There are almost no rural opposition MPs to raise the flag.
Parliament is not going to be part of Ritz’s nightmare.
