AMONG the Irish of the Gatineau Valley north of Ottawa, there is a somewhat poetic way of describing couples who choose to live together without the ritual of a formal wedding ceremony.
They’ve been married but not churched.
So let’s say that after last weekend’s overwhelming endorsement of Liberal leadership candidate Paul Martin by voting Liberal party members – he won close to 90 percent of delegates and is assured of victory at the Liberal leadership convention – Martin and the party have been married.
The churching will happen in Toronto in mid-November when he becomes the 10th Liberal leader and early next year, Canada’s 21st prime minister.
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All of which means that Lyle Vanclief’s tenure as agriculture minister probably is in its last months.
Martin has promised a new and revamped government. Vanclief was late to declare his support, is not loved by the industry and there are literally scores of candidates lined up with (at least in their minds) some claim on a Martin cabinet position.
The chances of Vanclief making the cut seem slim to none.
And that raises questions of his legacy. Not to put too fine a point on it, the legacy is in doubt.
Vanclief has been deeply involved in two policy areas – pushing the new agricultural policy framework into existence as a $5.2 billion five-year farm plan and pressing Canada’s agricultural trade goals at the World Trade Organization.
As it stands in mid-September, both policy goals and legacy candidates are in doubt. Vanclief may leave office after six and a half years with little to show other than the claim that he returned farm program spending to levels higher than they were before then-finance minister Paul Martin slashed them in 1995.
It is a certainty that Vanclief will not preside over completion of the WTO talks. In fact, his legacy on that file may be the erosion of supply management, one of Canada’s most successful farm programs.
He was at the launch of trade talks in Qatar two years ago and also in Cancœn, Mexico in mid-September when they ground to a halt.
The talks will continue and likely will end someday in a deal but almost certainly, the deal will involve erosion of the import-sensitive stability that supply managed sectors have enjoyed.
The next agriculture minister will have to wear the WTO result on his/her sleeve but Vanclief’s role in presiding over the launch of the talks that led to the erosion will be noted.
The fate of his controversial APF campaign is less certain.
Saskatchewan or Ontario must join to make it official and both provinces are in election mode with existing governments and potential replacements opposed to the program as it exists.
Vanclief and his bureaucratic advisers have pulled out every bully-boy trick in the political book to force reluctant provinces to sign. So far, there are few takers.
Rarely have so few tried to impose so much on so many.
If the dissidents hold out until the Martin era unfolds and his all-things-to-all-people era begins, the APF in its present form may end up being one of the victims.
Barring some unforeseen political capitulations, Vanclief may be looking at some legacy deficits.
