The Hill: The vindication of Lyle Vanclief

Monday, August 9, 2010

His departure as federal ag minister was largely unlamented. But, six years later, he is being credited for the 'historic changes' he brought to the Canadian agriculture and food industry

by BARRY WILSON

A little more than six years ago, on these pages, I wrote about the unceremonious and largely unlamented departure of former federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief from federal politics.

It was a column that angered some close to Vanclief.

It was a column that reflected not a personal opinion but the realities of the political stew he was leaving.

As a 16-year Liberal MP and with more than six years as agriculture minister, Vanclief had been sidelined by triumphant Paul Martin Liberals anxious to flush the Jean Chrétien team out of the party. Farm groups tended to fawn over successor Bob Speller, who they thought would be more compliant to their demands.

At the 2004 Dairy Farmers of Canada convention, where Vanclief had starred for six years, his presence was acknowledged not by name but as "someone we used to know." Speller won applause by saying: "One of the areas in which I wanted to do a bit better than we have in the past was to get out across the country and talk to farmers and farm families and farm leaders, and talk to them about where they felt we as a government could be doing better."

Apparently Vanclief never did that! Six years later, he gets some revenge.
In November, Vanclief will become only the third living former agriculture minister to join the ranks of Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame (CAHF) inductees, praised for the "historic changes in the Canadian agriculture and food industry" that he initiated as minister from 1997 to 2003.

Meanwhile, Speller lost the subsequent election in 2004 and became one of the shortest-serving agriculture ministers in Canadian history. When the next election is held, he will be trying for the second time to win back his rural southwest Ontario seat from human resources minister Diane Finlay, who wrested it from him in 2004, a seat he had held since 1988.

Vanclief's image as agriculture minister clearly has mellowed over the years. Although he secured billions of dollars in extra-ordinary farm aid and oversaw the introduction of the Agricultural Policy Framework (APF) with a minimum $5.2 billion, five-year commitment to farm programming, he was widely seen by farmers as inflexible, unsympathetic and a captive of  his disliked deputy minister Samy Watson. The APF was considered ineffective support.

Now, the Hall of Fame board offers a different view of those years. "During his years as federal agriculture minister, Lyle approached all the challenges and opportunities with a strong commitment and secured vision on the long-term health of the Canadian agriculture industry," the CAHF said in its citation.

Cam Dahl, a Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) commissioner who first encountered Vanclief as a Parliament Hill aide to then Reform Party agriculture critic Howard Hilstrom, says Vanclief changed the conversation in Canadian agricultural politics.

Dahl, soon to retire from the CGC, is vice-president of the agricultural hall of fame.

"There was a view around the table that the perspective of agriculture changed under his mandate with more of an emphasis on farmers having a business model and developing an economically viable model for agriculture," he said from Winnipeg.

Vanclief, from his home near Belleville, clearly was feeling some vindication with the honour. All he ever wanted to do was help agriculture.

News that his efforts were being recognized brought tears to his eyes. BF

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