AGRIWEEK oCT. 20/08
It being now completely impossible for any party to gain a clear majority in the Canadian parliament, last week’s Conservative win of 144 seats is as close as anyone is likely to get for decades to come. The government party gained 16 seats and ended only 12 short of a majority. The Conservative party has almost twice the representation in the new parliament (46%) of the Liberal party (25%). Before the election it was 41% and 31%. Liberal support was a record low in terms of the percentage of seats and votes cast. Excluding Quebec, where the Bloc believes it is the de facto national federal government, Conservative strength is a clear majority of 133 seats out of 233.
The minority is for practical purposes a majority because the opposition cannot risk yet another election (there have been three in four years). From the agricultural policy perspective, the election was a stunning approval of Conservative approaches and an equally stunning rejection of alternatives put forward by the opposition parties. There is not a single rural agricultural riding west of Quebec which returned an opposition member. For the first time, all rural constituencies in the rich southwestern Ontario farm belt voted Conservative, usually giving the candidates clear majorities. There are no NDP members from Saskatchewan, the province where the socialist party got its start, and only four in the entire prairie region. There are no Liberals from Alberta. The Conservative have none in Newfoundland, but otherwise have the only rational claim to being a national political party. They can also assume if it wishes the ‘natural governing party’ claim from the Liberals.
The Liberal opposition is in tatters generally, but it now does not have even the most theoretical basis on which to obstruct Conservative agricultural policies. The NDP and Bloc never had any such claim. The opposition simply does not represent the farming population.
The biggest and most urgent issue is of course the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. The election provided absolutely no room to argue that any more than a tiny minority of western farmers oppose plans for removal of the marketing monopoly. Voters in the west either approve of a dual grain market or else do not consider it important; they clearly do not see any credibility in Liberal and NDP opposition to Wheat Board reform. The Harper government could have avoided criticism for calling an election without being defeated in parliament by offering the opportunity to be defeated by pressing the Wheat Board bill in the last parliament (Bill C-46) as a confidence matter. However now even less is in the way of aggressively proceeding with this legislation or with a broader and more comprehensive reform bill.
More likely than not there will be a new agriculture minister in the new cabinet, possibly from Ontario. The way is open for a fresh start on this issue with the Wheat Board’s directors. It obviously will await the conclusion of the director elections in November. But by early in the New Year the directors will have an opportunity to co-operate with the government in an orderly remake of the Wheat Board into a voluntary marketing agency. If the directors persist in the previous mode of confrontation, lawsuits and bizarre insistence on their independence, the result will probably be the termination of the Board altogether.
The vote results strongly suggest that policy prevailed over personality in the farm vote. Agriminister Ritz, whose seat is Battlefords-Lloyd-minster, won by 9,024 votes against the NDP candidate; David Anderson, parliamentary secretary with special attention to the Wheat Board affair, received 17,921 votes compared to 4,315 for the NDP challenger in Cypress Hills-Grasslands. Christian Paradis, secretary of state for agriculture for Quebec, won by 8,000 votes over a Bloc candidate. James Bezan, co-chairman of the Commons agriculture committee and previously a well-known figure in beef circles, won in the Manitoba Selkirk-Inter-lake riding once held by NDPst Ed Shreyer by 13,800 votes.
The ex-National Farmers Union boss and Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter hung on in his Prince Edward Island riding by just 900 votes. Ralph Goodale, Chretieniste agriminister responsible for the present mess of the Wheat Board Act and also the remover of the Crow western grain freight subsidy, remains the only Liberal elected between Winnipeg and Vancouver, and one of only two in the whole prairie region.
Not one of the farm organization leaders who tried to get into politics as a Liberal made it. Bob Friesen, long-serving Canadian Federation of Agriculture president, received just 8,500 of 40,000 votes cast in a suburban Winnipeg riding. Rod Flaman, who would have exchanged his seat as a Wheat Board director, garnered 3,000 votes, fewer than he got in the last Wheat Board poll, finishing a distant third in Regina-Qu'Appelle. Nettie Wiebe, former NFU president running in Saskatoon, also lost. David Orchard, Saskatchewan farmer and political gadabout who once ran for the Conservative leadership and is now a radical Liberal, lost by 3,000 in a far-northern Saskatchewan riding.
(See also page 8)
It being now completely impossible for any party to gain a clear majority in the Canadian parliament, last week’s Conservative win of 144 seats is as close as anyone is likely to get for decades to come. The government party gained 16 seats and ended only 12 short of a majority. The Conservative party has almost twice the representation in the new parliament (46%) of the Liberal party (25%). Before the election it was 41% and 31%. Liberal support was a record low in terms of the percentage of seats and votes cast. Excluding Quebec, where the Bloc believes it is the de facto national federal government, Conservative strength is a clear majority of 133 seats out of 233.
The minority is for practical purposes a majority because the opposition cannot risk yet another election (there have been three in four years). From the agricultural policy perspective, the election was a stunning approval of Conservative approaches and an equally stunning rejection of alternatives put forward by the opposition parties. There is not a single rural agricultural riding west of Quebec which returned an opposition member. For the first time, all rural constituencies in the rich southwestern Ontario farm belt voted Conservative, usually giving the candidates clear majorities. There are no NDP members from Saskatchewan, the province where the socialist party got its start, and only four in the entire prairie region. There are no Liberals from Alberta. The Conservative have none in Newfoundland, but otherwise have the only rational claim to being a national political party. They can also assume if it wishes the ‘natural governing party’ claim from the Liberals.
The Liberal opposition is in tatters generally, but it now does not have even the most theoretical basis on which to obstruct Conservative agricultural policies. The NDP and Bloc never had any such claim. The opposition simply does not represent the farming population.
The biggest and most urgent issue is of course the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. The election provided absolutely no room to argue that any more than a tiny minority of western farmers oppose plans for removal of the marketing monopoly. Voters in the west either approve of a dual grain market or else do not consider it important; they clearly do not see any credibility in Liberal and NDP opposition to Wheat Board reform. The Harper government could have avoided criticism for calling an election without being defeated in parliament by offering the opportunity to be defeated by pressing the Wheat Board bill in the last parliament (Bill C-46) as a confidence matter. However now even less is in the way of aggressively proceeding with this legislation or with a broader and more comprehensive reform bill.
More likely than not there will be a new agriculture minister in the new cabinet, possibly from Ontario. The way is open for a fresh start on this issue with the Wheat Board’s directors. It obviously will await the conclusion of the director elections in November. But by early in the New Year the directors will have an opportunity to co-operate with the government in an orderly remake of the Wheat Board into a voluntary marketing agency. If the directors persist in the previous mode of confrontation, lawsuits and bizarre insistence on their independence, the result will probably be the termination of the Board altogether.
The vote results strongly suggest that policy prevailed over personality in the farm vote. Agriminister Ritz, whose seat is Battlefords-Lloyd-minster, won by 9,024 votes against the NDP candidate; David Anderson, parliamentary secretary with special attention to the Wheat Board affair, received 17,921 votes compared to 4,315 for the NDP challenger in Cypress Hills-Grasslands. Christian Paradis, secretary of state for agriculture for Quebec, won by 8,000 votes over a Bloc candidate. James Bezan, co-chairman of the Commons agriculture committee and previously a well-known figure in beef circles, won in the Manitoba Selkirk-Inter-lake riding once held by NDPst Ed Shreyer by 13,800 votes.
The ex-National Farmers Union boss and Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter hung on in his Prince Edward Island riding by just 900 votes. Ralph Goodale, Chretieniste agriminister responsible for the present mess of the Wheat Board Act and also the remover of the Crow western grain freight subsidy, remains the only Liberal elected between Winnipeg and Vancouver, and one of only two in the whole prairie region.
Not one of the farm organization leaders who tried to get into politics as a Liberal made it. Bob Friesen, long-serving Canadian Federation of Agriculture president, received just 8,500 of 40,000 votes cast in a suburban Winnipeg riding. Rod Flaman, who would have exchanged his seat as a Wheat Board director, garnered 3,000 votes, fewer than he got in the last Wheat Board poll, finishing a distant third in Regina-Qu'Appelle. Nettie Wiebe, former NFU president running in Saskatoon, also lost. David Orchard, Saskatchewan farmer and political gadabout who once ran for the Conservative leadership and is now a radical Liberal, lost by 3,000 in a far-northern Saskatchewan riding.
(See also page 8)
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