Agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief has earned the right to go back to the family farm near Belleville, Ont., this Christmas feeling a tad self-satisfied.
He is one of the first federal ministers to secure a share of the “fiscal dividend” for his portfolio in post-deficit Ottawa.
True, despite a promise of federal help, the financial problems facing some grain and hog farmers remain and tens of thousands face an uncertain 1999.
But Vanclief should be allowed a little time for self-congratulation, since his political year ended on a high note.
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Vanclief, veteran politician but rookie minister, had passed through his first major test and proved that when needed, he has the cabinet allies, clout and skill to win cabinet arguments.
Last year, he inherited an agriculture department whose funding and resources had been deeply eroded during the battle against the deficit.
This year, the farm sector faced its first serious income/price collapse since the government cuts and the diminished safety net system quickly was found wanting.
Vanclief had to tackle a three-pronged sales job, convincing the federal cabinet that more support is needed, the provinces that they have little option but to share funding and farmers that they must be content with less help than they had been hoping to receive.
At first, he seemed to stumble by appearing reluctant to concede there was a problem, by sticking to the party line that the safety net system is “the best in the world” and then by complaining that farmers seemed not to be making full use of existing safety nets.
He became an easy target for opposition MP and farm leader complaints that Ottawa was insensitive. But once he decided action was needed, the minister displayed some sharp political skills.
By year end, he had managed to wrest close to a billion dollars in farm spending commitments out of the federal cabinet. It reversed half a decade of sharp cuts.
He seems on the way to persuading the provinces to sign onto a new long-term farm income disaster program. That almost certainly will have to involve an increase in funding for agriculture.
He seems to have carved in stone the principle of a 60/40 cost-shared funding split with the provinces, even though that particular sharing arrangement is a recent creation and not a long Canadian tradition. If all provinces sign onto a long-term program with such a costing formula, it will commit the provinces to a much greater share of spending than has been traditional.
And Vanclief even ended the year by hearing some rare praise from farm leader Jack Wilkinson, who has not always been generous in his assessment of the minister’s desire to fight for farm financial interests inside cabinet.
All in all, it was an upbeat end to a political year that could have ended badly.
The government program will not be enough to help everyone but then again, that is not what Vanclief thinks government should do anyway.
Within his more narrow vision of government’s role, the minister scored a major victory in the political Ottawa of the late 1990s.
