When looking at the electoral map from the 2011 federal election, most agricultural and rural ridings outside of Quebec are a deep blue, which signifies strong Conservative support.
So at first glance there appears little incentive for political parties to pay attention to rural ridings, especially in the West.
In the past few elections, prime minister Stephen Harper hasn’t had to worry about offering anything substantial, other than dismantling the CWB, to his rural/agricultural base because it was already locked down.
The other political parties didn’t bother to spend much political capital on the agriculture file because they were unlikely to make seat gains in the Conservative rural strongholds.
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In this election, however, there are signs that seats may be up for grabs in agricultural areas.
Recent reports claim Harper has already offered up supply management, at least in dairy and poultry, at the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. That would likely direct some rural Ontario and Quebec votes away from the Conservatives.
Many cash crop and livestock producers in the West look upon the TPP favourably but even in the West, polls suggest support for the Conservatives is waning and the NDP is gaining ground.
So, maybe agricultural and rural issues will matter in this election.
One might ask why, then, was agriculture not mentioned in the first election debate hosted by Maclean’s?
Producers used to agriculture issues being somewhere in the fine print in national election coverage know the answer.
National media producers find issues like defence, global warming and auto manufacturing much sexier than agriculture.
At The Western Producer, we cover Canadian agriculture. So if you want to understand the federal party agriculture platforms, we are about to dig in.
We are asking the agriculture critics of each federal political party to participate in Western Producer editorial board meetings and we plan on publishing videos of those meetings if and when they occur.
On this page we will have links to our election stories, columns, social media conversations and polls, and we look forward to talking to you about Canadian Agriculture.
Contact robin.booker@producer.com
