Ontario dominates the House agriculture committee

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

But, with Prairie-centred issues like the abolition of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly holding centre stage, committee members will have a steep learning curve
 

by BARRY WILSON

As the 41st Parliament opened in early June, only to adjourn after three weeks for a 12-week summer break, the agriculture debate was shaping up to be a largely Ontario affair.

If Saskatchewan-based agriculture minister Gerry Ritz is taken out of the equation (an admittedly large part of the equation), the key agriculture players in the new Parliament are Ontario MPs.

Pierre Lemieux from eastern Ontario is Ritz's parliamentary secretary, representing him on the House of Commons agriculture committee and answering for him in the Commons when the minister is absent.

He mainly will be answering questions from Official Opposition agriculture critic Malcolm Allen, a New Democratic MP from the Welland area of southwest Ontario and a former electrician and union activist who served in the last Parliament as his party's food safety critic.

And when the third-place Liberals occasionally use their limited Question Period presence to ask an agriculture question, it will come from new agriculture critic Frank Valeriote, a Guelph lawyer who served on the agriculture committee in the last Parliament.

Larry Miller, a Bruce County cattle producer and veteran MP, is again chair of the agriculture committee. His vice-chairs are Allen and Valeriote, all Ontario all the time. In a way, it is fitting.

Despite its image as Canada's industrial heartland, Ontario also is the country's largest agricultural province, even if the sector has been one of the most economically challenged in recent years.

Lemieux, a former military man, represents a very rural and agricultural riding. Allen, with no formal connection to the industry other than living on a small farm in the countryside surrounded by commercial farmers, nonetheless represents a strongly agricultural riding and has been working hard to master their concerns.

Valeriote, initially assigned to the committee as one of three Liberals in the last Parliament because he represents Guelph (where many agriculture bureaucrats and provincial farm lobby groups are located and also where the university is a leading agriculture research centre), now finds himself the only Liberal on the committee. He admits there is a steep learning curve ahead but is plowing into it with enthusiasm.

Veteran Liberal MP and longtime agriculture critic Wayne Easter is still there for advice a few seats away in the Commons. Easter asked to be moved to the international trade file, depressed at the prospect of a majority Conservative government being able to implement many of the policies he has fought against successfully through more than five years of minority government.

The agriculture committee also includes four Prairie Conservatives and two rookie rural Quebec New Democrats plus British Columbia's Alex Atamanenko, NDP critic in the last Parliament.

The Ontario dominance of parliamentary agricultural positions comes at an ironic time, since the main agricultural issues during the next year will be Prairie-centred, with the most politically volatile debate being the future of the Winnipeg-based Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).

Ritz has vowed to end the 68-year-old CWB wheat and barley monopoly of sales for export and domestic human consumption by Aug. 1, 2012. Legislation will be tabled in the autumn and the debate will be fierce.

Ontario Conservatives, as well as their prairie colleagues, will tout the continuation of the voluntary Ontario wheat board as proof positive that the CWB can exist without a single-desk monopoly.

The government also is expected to propose contentious reform for the Winnipeg-based Canadian Grain Commission.

The new Ontario critics will have a steep learning curve indeed. BF

Barry Wilson is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery specializing in agriculture.