Ag was usually seen through a different scope, a policy analyst says
With Prime Minister Trudeau’s resignation announcement, Farms.com connected with Tyler McCann, managing director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, about how the federal Liberals under Trudeau viewed the ag sector.
The federal Liberals were always going to struggle to connect with farmers because of their makeup, he says.
“The Liberal cabinet was generally a reflection of urban Canada,” he told Farms.com. “So, I think it’s reasonable to see there’s a disconnect, and that political reality drove a lot of what we saw.”
Two ministers, Lawrence MacAulay, and Marie-Claude Bibeau, served as the heads of AAFC.
Cabinet choices shouldn’t be overlooked, McCann says.
“Choosing a cabinet is one of the most important things a prime minister does because it speaks to how the prime minister views each portfolio,” McCann said. “I think the consensus would be that Trudeau didn’t put his strongest ministers in ag.”
MacAulay is currently in his second stint as ag minister after originally serving in this role from 2015 to 2019. From 2019 to 2023 he was the minister of veterans affairs.
Despite his experience as a dairy and potato farmer in P.E.I., his return as ag minister wasn’t met with much fanfare, McCann says.
Tyler McCann
“I think he’s seen as a really nice guy that means well, but his return to the sector was kind of a sign that Justin Trudeau wasn’t putting much emphasis on agriculture,” McCann said. “MacAulay would be more aligned with farmers but seemed less motivated to have an impact.”
Bibeau, the outgoing minister of national revenue, held the ag portfolio from 2019 to 2023. From 2015 to 2019 she served as minister of international development.
She represents a rural Quebec riding and appeared more ambitious to make change in ag, but that work encountered hiccups.
The modernization of rules around gene editing is one example of this, McCann said.
In May 2023, Minister Bibeau approved the CFIA’s regulatory guidance on GM plants and seeds, making some of them exempt from regulation.
“I think the majority of the sector wanted to see change made because the science is relatively clear,” McCann said. “But there was a major push on Minister Bibeau’s part to get the organic sector and environmental activists on board, even though those were political considerations as opposed to what’s good for agriculture based on science.”
Another hurdle the Trudeau Liberals faced with the ag sector, McCann says, is their approach to ag policy.
Rather than the ag minister and AAFC driving policy decisions, work in other ministries spilled over into agriculture.
“Often where we did see action of agriculture issues, they were driven by the ministry of environment and climate change, for example,” he said. “The fertilizer emissions reduction is a really good example of that.”
As a reminder, the government set a goal of reducing emissions from nitrogen fertilizers by 30 per cent from 2020 levels, by 2030.
The idea of reducing emissions from fertilizers is a good idea. But the government’s execution lacked a degree of thoroughness, McCann said.
“There was a way that could’ve been done as a good thing for the sector,” he said. “The government could’ve talked about increasing competition. But they just couldn’t connect those dots. And they weren’t talking about how it could be good for agriculture, but because it was needed for the environment.”
That doesn’t mean, however, that every policy decision proved unbeneficial for producers.
The government invested heavily in on-farm environmental programming and exempted the “vast majority” of ag emissions from the carbon tax, McCann added.
When it comes to the federal government its trade agenda over 10 years, recent struggles stand out.
Bill C-282 and the trade agreement with the UK falling apart are two examples McCann pointed to.
But early in the mandate, the government proved successful in negotiating trade agreements that benefitted farmers.
“CPTPP was signed, and they worked hard to get CETA accomplished, and they got through the CUSMA negotiations,” McCann says. “There were some early successes but those seemed to have faded away over the last six or seven years.”
A federal election will happen in 2025.
Whichever party forms government needs to put an emphasis on the importance of agriculture to this country, McCann says.
“This sector is full of opportunities and challenges too,” he said. “But there’s a real role it can play going forward. Agriculture and food processing are a major strategic asset for the government, and we need to see a government act like it is.”