by BARRY WILSON
Veteran Prince Edward Island MP and former cabinet minister Lawrence MacAulay was appointed Canada’s 33rd federal agriculture minister in the new Justin Trudeau Liberal government Nov. 4.
He takes office with few specific campaign promises to fulfill but with some major policy questions to be decided in the next two years.
MacAulay is a 69-year-old former P.E.I farmer first sworn into a cabinet post in 1993 as solicitor general and who held other cabinet posts under former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.
Through his 27 years in Parliament, he has not been a major voice in agricultural debates.
And the Liberal Party election platform did not burden him with many specific promises to the farm community.
The party promised $160 million over four years to an Agri-Food Value Added Investment Fund, $100 million over four years to agricultural research and $80 million over four years to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
It also promised a rail pricing review and a re-assessment of the safety net cuts included in the Growing Forward 2 federal-provincial agreement that took effect in 2013 and is up for renewal by 2017.
Agriculture was not a major part of the Liberal successful campaign for government.
However, MacAulay will be facing pressure to influence some key decisions as the new Liberal regime settles in.
New trade minister Chrystia Freeland, a former economic journalist from downtown Toronto, will be the lead minister on whether to ratify the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership Asia-Pacific trade deal that opens markets for Canadian meat, grain and pulse crop producers but undermines some supply management domestic market protections.
The outgoing Conservative government promised more than $4 billion in compensation to supply-managed farmers over the next 15 years. The Liberals have not indicated if they would ratify the deal and if so, whether the Conservative compensation promise will be honored.
It will be up to MacAulay to defend or renounce that commitment.
Ratification of the Canada-European Union trade deal also falls to the new government. Despite its small opening for European cheese imports, most export-oriented farm sectors support the deal, and the new minister will be called upon to represent the sector at the cabinet table.
Next year also will see the beginning of more intensive federal-provincial negotiations over the shape and detail of the next Growing Forward five-year agreement.
The last deal led to significant cuts in farm safety net programs and in opposition the Liberals criticized them while promising to restore some of the income protections.
MacAulay will be the lead federal negotiator when talks become more serious at next summer’s federal-provincial agriculture ministers’ meeting.
Another major issue for the new agriculture minister will be what promises to be an activist Liberal government agenda on climate change and the environment. Rookie Ottawa MP Catherine McKenna, environment and climate change minister, has an agenda and little obvious connection to agriculture.
With Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne a significant supporter of Trudeau during his Ontario campaigning, pressure will be on Agriculture Canada to pitch in on stronger environmental policies, possibly including following Ontario’s model of restricting neonicotinoid pesticides in seed treatment.
Health minister and rookie urban MP Jane Philpott will be the lead minister on the file since her responsibility includes the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, and MacAulay will face pressure to represent agricultural issues during the discussion.
He replaces Saskatchewan-based minster Gerry Ritz who held the job for more than eight years.
MacAulay is the first agriculture minister to come from P.E.I.; he’s also the only one from that province in the federal cabinet. BF
Read more about Canada's new agriculture minister in Barry Wilson's column, The Hill, in Better Farming's December 2015 edition.
Comments
It's like this - Huron County, just by itself, consistently produces 40% more in farm gate sales than any of the four Atlantic provinces, leading one to wonder how somebody effectively welded to Atlantic agriculture can understand the depth and breadth of Canadian agriculture.
In addition, in a Cabinet seeming to be dominated by people half MacAulay's age, is he going to be seen to be a token and irrelevant "voice from the past"?
Most interesting will be the inevitable friction between trade Minister, Chrystia Freeland, a former economic journalist, and MacAuley because every economic journalist in Canada is, by definition, opposed to supply management while a 69-year-old former dairy farmer like MacAuley is likely to support it.
It will all unfold, but it could easily be that MacAuley is going to be the figure-head sent out to schmooze with farm folk while the real work affecting agriculture is going to be done by others like Freeland.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
I am glad a farmer is now the Minister. I would like to see more interprovincial trade and less international trade because my main concern is supporting the family farms and eating healthy food. I can't find fiddleheads from the Maritimes but there are all kinds of things that are not fresh from China and Mexico. The TPP would hurt not only the Dairy Farmers but the nation will be drinking milk that does not meet our standards and much of it contains growth hormones. I would also like to see better labeling on our food. When the label only says imported for Federated Co-op or Loblaw you have no idea where it comes from. You can not buy a can of mushrooms in my town that does not come from China. What a shame. Good luck and I hope to see some changes.
(1) If/when TPP is ratified, the only milk likely to enter Canada will be, thanks to high transportation costs, coming from nearby US states.
(2) There's no reason to believe TPP will see any increase in the amount of milk coming into Canada because without quota, Canadian dairy farmers will be able to meet any import challenges if they're as innovative and as progressive as they continually boast.
(3) there's no non-tariff reason to prevent the importation of dairy products containing artificial growth hormones into Canada now.
(4) while the artificial BST growth hormone isn't allowed to be sold in Canada, Canadian dairy farmers are allowed to import it for their own use and they don't have to notify anyone when they do.
(5) the billion dollars in annual imports of milk protein replacement coming into Canada from the US obviously meets our "standards" or it would been have stopped long ago.
(6) All of the milk protein imports in (5) above could contain artificial growth hormones, yet would satisfy our "standards" noted in (3) above.
Finally, if any consumer doesn't trust canned Chinese mushrooms, he/she can almost always buy fresh, Ontario-grown mushrooms. The principle is called "freedom of choice" and is something the above poster seems to want to restrict by wanting less international trade which, in turn, will hurt our export-oriented sectors of not just agriculture, but the entire economy.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
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