A journey through Ontario’s tobacco country last week to record the death throes of a once-prosperous Canadian farm sector brought back memories of a summer day a quarter century ago when I first encountered the tobacco lobby.
They are unpleasant memories.
It was one of the toughest days of my life as a newspaperman. It was a hot Ottawa day in the early 1980s and farmers were on Parliament Hill demanding that the full protections of Canada’s supply management system be extended to them.
They already controlled their production through quotas and negotiated prices with the manufacturers. What they lacked was the ability to control imports. These farmers were on the Hill unprepared to take no for an answer.
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As a reporter relatively new to Hill coverage, I thought it would be an interesting story to write about a lobby effort from the inside. I asked if I could join them in their meetings and they agreed.
Many times that day, I regretted my news instinct for coverage, my request for access and their acquiescence.
My emotions on the issue of cigarettes, tobacco and cancer were still very raw. My father, a smoker from age 12, had recently died a painful, delusional lung cancer death. Being part of his final agony was an episode I consider the greatest trauma of my life.
And these guys were in no mood to listen to anyone bad-mouthing their legal product. They were aggressive, combative and argumentative to any MP who raised any question of government support for a known carcinogen.
The jury is out, they would insist, science is divided, lobby groups are making the argument and this was a good product that sustained many Ontario communities.
I bit my tongue. I was a reporter, not a partisan. But my silence in the face of their assertions seemed to make them conclude I needed some education.
The breaking point came when one farmer told me aggressively that “this stuff” (Ottawa’s relatively unpolluted air) is far more dangerous to health than anything in tobacco products.
I had had enough, bid them farewell and went back to my office, wishing I had done something else that day.
Twenty-five years later, the picture is so different. Tobacco farmers are lobbying government to buy them out, eliminate the industry and then use that as a bragging point to the world about Canada’s health leadership.
They are firm in their demand for help but not belligerent, accepting that they had good years and now they are over, vulnerable and sympathetic.
A very different memory.
