Heath MacDonald, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, takes part in the cabinet swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on May 13.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Ottawa‘s top priority in agriculture will be trade, with a focus on helping to build new markets for Canadian producers in the Indo-Pacific and Britain, according to the new federal Agriculture Minister.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Heath MacDonald said the emphasis will include tackling interprovincial barriers and stressed that the needs of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta will be a priority.
He says he will push to resolve a continuing dispute with China and build on a sense of national unification inspired by the tariff threats from the U.S.
“A farmer in Alberta is no different than a farmer in Prince Edward Island, besides scale. And they’re all producing food for the world.”
Mr. MacDonald is taking the helm of Canada’s food producing industry at a tense moment.
Months of trade disputes with the United States, Canada’s largest partner, has thrown food supply chains into turmoil and fuelled questions about the resilience of Canadian food security.
But there is one thing Mr. MacDonald promises will not change: supply management. President Donald Trump has consistently taken aim at Canada’s import controls around dairy, but Mr. MacDonald says supply management is “off the table” and any question of giving U.S. producers more access to the Canadian market is “a non-starter.”
In the industry’s second-largest market, China, Canada’s canola, pork and seafood processors were also slapped with tariffs. Beijing’s move in March was a retaliation to Ottawa tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, and the fallout has stoked grievances among Western producers who feel ignored when compared with support for Eastern Canada’s auto sector.
Mr. MacDonald was not the agriculture industry’s favourite.
Kody Blois, the 34-year old chair of the House of Commons agriculture committee and a Nova Scotian, was expected to be nominated. When he was agriculture minister during Mr. Carney’s first cabinet, before the election, Mr. Blois racked up a positive reputation with industry groups who have long sought energy and action from Ottawa.
Nonetheless, PEI’s Mr. MacDonald − whose background is in provincial politics, where he was minister of economic development and tourism, and then later, minister of finance − sees the challenge and an opportunity.
“We don’t have a choice,” he said. “Either we do it or we’re going to be left behind.”
The next priority is decreasing red tape and boosting innovation and technology. This is in line with Liberal Party platform promises to invest in greenhouses and other controlled-environment agriculture, alongside $200-million in the Domestic Food Processing Fund (Canada has long fallen short of competitors on value-added processing).
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has already requested a meeting, Mr. MacDonald said. Ms. Rollins has consistently criticized the U.S. trade deficit and backed Mr. Trump’s rhetoric that Canada (among other countries) is driving an unfair trade balance.