One of the unexpected pleasures of covering agricultural politics on Parliament Hill is the unintended humour that often ensues when urban MPs feel the need to pronounce themselves on agricultural issues.
There was the time in the 1980s when canola was struggling to win GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status in the United States and a canola industry official appeared before a Senate committee to discuss it. One senator wondered what all the fuss was about. “I eat it every morning and I feel fine so of course it’s safe.”
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“Uh, I believe you are referring to granola, senator.”
“Oh.”
Or the time in the early 1980s when the Crow rate was being debated at length and an urban New Democrat MP, a tad inebriated as she rambled on to fill time during a late-night session, kept referring to the “Crowsfeet deal,” presumably thinking about those nasty wrinkles around her eyes.
Not so many years ago, Liberal senator Frank Mahovlich was struggling to understand dairy industry opposition to bovine growth hormone.
He had listened to arguments that BGH can be a health risk but they use this stuff in the U.S., right? He used to play hockey against a guy from Detroit called Gordie Howe and it didn’t seem to affect him.
Case closed.
These incidents, among many, came to mind recently as a sincere New Democrat from Hamilton, Ont., noted in the approach to International Women’s Day March 8 that the Conservative government apparently cares more about pigs than about women, at least if recent spending is any indication.
The complaint caught my attention. It would be a great story, the Conservatives courting the porcine vote over the female vote, although a quick count showed fewer pigs than women in Canada – 15 million pigs versus close to 17 million women.
This doesn’t sound like sound electoral strategy. But Chris Charlton seemed sure of her facts.
“Instead of dealing with (women’s) issues, the Conservative government propped up by the Liberals passed a budget that gave only $20 million to advance the equality of women yet it found $50 million for the hog industry,” she told MPs. “That works out to $3.57 for every hog in Canada but only $1.21 per woman.” Shocking.
Charlton would have been even more shocked had her researchers discovered that the hog money was being used to slaughter innocent female pigs, rather than to improve their condition.
Had she known, perhaps she would have been grateful that women weren’t higher on finance minister Jim Flaherty’s radar screen.
