SINCLAIR Harrison, a Saskatchewan farmer who knows his way around politics at municipal, provincial and federal levels, blew into Paul Martin’s Ottawa last week with what he figures was a good pick-up line for wooing the new government.
Hi, I’m from Western Canada, my neighbours and I need your help and it won’t cost you anything.
The subtext is equally blunt: In his run for office, Martin promised to make western alienation a make or break issue for the government. Let’s see the colour of your commitment.
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Harrison, a former president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, one-time applicant to become chief commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission and sometimes touted as a potential Liberal candidate, was in the capital as president of the Farmer Rail Car Coalition.
It is a group of farm groups vying to take ownership of the government fleet of 12,500 aging grain hopper cars. If the coalition can convince Ottawa to give the cars away, they promise to maintain and upgrade them when necessary and to reduce farmer costs while maintaining service.
It is a file that has been languishing since 1996 when the deficit-obsessed government and its finance minister Paul Martin indicated the rail cars were for sale. The coalition formed and began to lobby but the government dithered in the face of railway demands that the cars be auctioned off.
Martin’s finance department liked that idea, imagining at least some return on an aging asset.
Now, the dynamic has changed. The former finance minister is in charge, is promising to tackle western alienation and has few surplus dollars to invest in new west-friendly policies.
That’s one of the reasons Harrison thinks his timing is right.
Martin is facing a spring election and he’s being presented with an opportunity to send a low-cost signal of regional and farmer sensitivity.
“I believe it is a perfect opportunity for the prime minister to begin to deliver on one of his key promises,” Harrison said at the end of his four-day trip.
So convinced is he that Martin will see the wisdom of the plan that Harrison will be back in Ottawa soon after the Feb. 2 Throne Speech to keep pressing the case. “I’m hoping for a signal as early as then.”
Meanwhile, the same kind of demands soon will come from Alberta as advocates of Senate reform begin to remind Martin of his promise to tackle the “democratic deficit.”
The man who has in the past proclaimed himself in favour of a Triple E Senate – elected, equal and effective – will find himself with two Alberta Senate seats to fill in 2004 with the forced retirement at age 75 of Thelma Chalifoux (Feb. 8) and Douglas Roche (June 14.)
As luck would have it, Albertans have indicated by vote the two people they would like to fill those seats – farmer Bert Brown and academic Ted Morton.
The pressure from Alberta and the federal Conservative opposition to appoint these two will be enormous.
And the arguments will sound familiar – it would be a no-cost but highly symbolic gesture to an alienated region.
Memo to Paul Martin: be cautious in expectations you raise on the road to high office. Some people might actually expect you to fulfill them.
