The Final Mile podcast on RealAgriculture.com is brought to you by Results Driven Agriculture Research. Find out more by going to rdar.ca. Welcome to another episode of The Final Mile podcast brought to you by RDAR. We got a special treat here today. We have two former Minister of Agriculture for the province of Alberta. Up first, needs no introduction, but we will do so anyway. It is Ms. Shirley McLennan. Shirley, how we doing?
Good, very good, thanks.
So Shirley, I guess very quickly here, give us some of your— I know you as being like really leading the charge at the time of BSE, but your career is much more than that. Give us a quick background.
Well, in government? Yeah, sure. I spent almost 20 years there, had a variety of portfolios. And served under two premiers, Don Getty initially and Ralph Klein for the complete term of Ralph. In fact, he resigned at 10 o'clock one January morning and I resigned at 12. So, it was a lengthy time.
I didn't know that part of the story. Interesting. Okay, well, we could do a whole podcast on Ralph Klein stories, but we will leave that for another time. Another time. Also joining us here today is Mr. Verlyn Olson. How are we doing today, Verlyn?
I'm doing well, thank you.
Okay, so Verlyn, you were Minister of Agriculture after Shirley. Talk about some of your background.
Yeah, there were several other ministers in between us too, I'm pretty sure, but I was elected in 2008, so I was only in the ledge for about 7 years, I want to say 7 or 8 years, So less than half of what Shirley, but I served under 4 premiers. Wow.
There's Alberta politics to a tee right there. Wow.
I guess we must have been harder on premiers than when Shirley was there. I don't know. But so I served under Ed Stelmach, Alison Redford, Dave Hancock, and Jim Prentice. Wow. And started out as the Justice Minister and Attorney General and then somewhat surprisingly or very surprisingly was moved over by Alison Redford to Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development at the time, Doug Horner. I was kind of like a deer in the headlights at that point, and Doug Horner, who had been a former Ag Minister maybe twice, said to me, it's the best ministry in government, you're going to love it. And I really did. It was a wonderful ministry to serve in.
Yeah, it is. It is a great industry, and your stakeholders that you deal with are a little bit different than if you were like the Ministry, Minister of like, uh, trade or energy. Like, you're, you're, you're really, really dealing here with the, the grassroots across the board. So it is, I agree, Verlyn, it is a pretty special position. And today we're going to be talking about governing Alberta agriculture through challenges and, and, and tough times. And, uh, we have no shortage of issues that are facing our industry and challenging it. Uh, producers know this very, very well. So you both held You both held responsibility for Alberta's agriculture system during some tough periods. When you look back, what made those times especially challenging for producers? Shirley, we'll let you go first.
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that agriculture is a shared responsibility between the federal government and the provincial government, and that is unusual. There's only, I think, 2 portfolios that are completely shared. So, what that means is that when you have an issue that affects the industry, you have to get the federal government and, at that time, BSE would have been 9 other provinces and now territories onside with what you're doing to move ahead. That's my— Yeah. That was the biggest thing that slowed us down when, and you know, we're not very patient in Alberta.
I think you're understating that, Shirley. I like it. Verlin, how about for you?
I would very much agree with what Shirley says. There is a real complexity. There's always a frustration if you feel like stuff is beyond your control. And just naturally that's happening in agriculture anyway because of things like weather and those types of things, but then also we are not kind of an authority unto ourselves, and when I think about some of the stuff I dealt with, not only was it necessary to be working with other jurisdictions and other levels of government, but also with other ministries within my own government too. There are a lot of times we were collaborating on things, especially when there's some sort of a disaster. So that all, to me, that all means right at the top of the pile is the importance of relationships, being able to work with other groups.
Now, Shirley, Verlyn just actually said there about working with some of your cabinet colleagues. I'm sure there is collaboration, but I'm sure there's also some times where it's not all roses and happy words. There's some friction behind the scenes sometimes too, especially during challenging times.
Well, it can be difficult because when you have a disaster like that, generally you're needing some financial support, and there's of course many many pressures on that with other ministries. But I have to say that I would say that in all— and actually, I was in Agriculture twice. So, as Associate Minister of Agriculture in '89, and with Ernie Eysley as the minister. Oh yeah. And then again in 2003. And so, I had a fair amount of experience with that, um, dealing with other ministries. But Verlyn's right, environment comes into play many times in, in what you're hoping to achieve and do. Health, to some extent, you try not to get into the weeds there, but there are competing interests and resources are always tight, and we were trying to get out of debt still in some of those emergencies. And the other thing I think it's important to mention, Verlyn, is we export 20%, uh, 80% of what we produce, right? Consume about 20%. So not only do we have our domestic, um, issues we have to deal with, I think there were 40 countries that closed their borders to us in BSE. That's pretty significant.
Yeah, Verlyn, any more thoughts on that?
Again, totally agree with Shirley. We're kind of like a two-headed monster here, I guess. No, I mean, you know, Canada is an exporting country. International trade is kind of our bread and butter. And so obviously it's important for us to have good relationships with many other countries, but also You know, I think a lot of times, I don't know if Shirley had this experience, but I remember the experience of being people telling me, we don't think of you as Albertans, we think of you as Canadians. You're just all Canadians to us. So, you know, obviously, if we don't have a good relationship with the Canadian government, that's going to hurt us in terms of our export markets and the relationships we're trying to build there. A lot of collaboration, it seems like every, at every turn there's the need for collaboration.
Well, let's just go through some of the list here because I want to ask you about how in totality these kinds of challenges and crises changed the role of agronomist or how it impacted it. So we've got here UK foot and mouth disease, we've got BSE, of course. Crow rate elimination. Um, I'll tell you what, Shirley, I, I one time talked about how it's a good thing we got rid of the crow rate, and I got— boy, did I get smacked on social media. That one's still controversial. Uh, getting rid of the Canadian Wheat Board, which was a, a huge one. We've got XL Foods E. coli recall. Um, we got floods, grain transportation crises. Uh, we've got Porcupine epidemic diarrhoea virus, or porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus, Verlyn. There's that one. So I guess, Verlyn, if you, as you look at that list and some of those you had to deal with yourself, do you feel those crises fundamentally changed the job of Agriculture Minister? And what did going through that and having to make tough decisions, what did that reveal about where the system was the most fragile?
Well, context is important for me here because I was appointed, I think it was in May of 2012. I think my first crisis happened in, I think it was July, when we had a rat infestation at the Medicine Hat dump, and the Premier and I were on a plane down to Medicine Hat, to show support and so on. The next month it was the XL Foods. Then it was the next month was renegotiating Growing Forward 2. And then, yeah, it's kind of one thing after another. So drinking from a fire hose.
Were you wondering what the heck you did to the Prime Minister, to the Premier, to be in this spot?
Well, I— yeah, it When I think about it now, it was kind of a dizzying pace. And all of this as a, you know, a rookie minister who, you know, I wasn't— in my previous life, I hadn't really had any experience with any of this stuff. I had two wonderful deputies, John Knapp and then Jason Cripps. And my very first meeting with John Knapp, when he gave me my briefing books, he said, well, you have 626 key stakeholder organisations and they all want to meet with you now. Yesterday.
Yesterday.
Yeah. And so again, it's relationships though. These are people who want to meet a face and interact. And agriculture is just such an important ministry for that kind of thing. So yeah, I felt like I was just hanging on and I feel like it would be a little presumptuous for me to say kind of at that point in my tenure what had changed or, you know, that type of thing. Shirley's probably far better to answer that type of a question than me. But the one thing that underscored pretty much everything I was experiencing was the importance of relationships and communication.
Yeah, surely.
How about for you?
Well, um, I mean, the list goes, it continues. Um, I had two droughts, one 3-year, one 5-year, and, and of course with that, grasshoppers, um, BSE, foot and mouth, or hoof and mouth, whichever way you want to call it, um, the crow, of course, uh affected all of us. But so it's kind of a revolving door. But one of the things that it— I think it sharpened us up to understandings that we had to do better on our income or farm support programs. And we really learned that in spades, I think, maybe in the income crisis, which was very significant. 20% interest rates, uh, people had expanded using debt, um, and so we just realised that our, our safety nets were not— they weren't working. And one of— and why they didn't work, in our opinion, was that they were too broad. So if you, if you entered into a safety net program, you were in a large area Today, our safety nets— I'm not sure that the producers are going to agree with me, but they can't get me now. Um, they're, they're your— you make your decision on your individual farm. And that's what I was told over and over and over again. You're lumping me in with whether they're a good manager, a bad manager, a totally different operation than I have, and I'm not protecting what I'm doing. So, we've improved that, accessibility, you know, various things that have come along. And so, I think it's sharpened us up, Verlyn. I don't know how you feel looking at those things and maybe understanding more of the environmental things that can come at you that you have to be prepared for. The cattle industry would tell you that after BSE, I think they would tell you this, They were looking at prevention. How do we stay ahead of these things? How are we prepared for them if they do come at us? And if you think about it, today is the 23rd anniversary of CFIA announcing that Alberta had a positive cow. May 20th, 2003.
Is it today?
Yes, I'm sure. I'll never forget it. It's embedded in, uh, so, you know, when you think about where we've come from and when you think that the devastation that that could have caused, um, I don't want to be lengthy, but the Crow benefit leaving The transportation subsidies changing really were part of why we had such a huge cattle industry in 2003. We had over 50% of the cow-calf, we had over 70% of the processing. I mean, it was, it was huge. So that's how things evolved in agriculture, and I think, I honestly think that it made us sharper, and I think today that our Ag Ministers are forward-looking, maybe more so than certainly I was in '89.
So you're probably being harsh on yourself there, but you know, what I wonder is, like, you know, Verlyn mentioned all the different stakeholder groups that want to talk with you yesterday when you're the Minister, right? That is very, very true, and we know this, I don't care if it's in Alberta or any other province or nationally, they're not all on the same page, right? It's not like you're the Minister for Transportation and when you meet with the airlines they're kind of all asking for the same thing, right? When we're the Minister of Agriculture, there's a lot of diversity in those groups. Verland has become— is it difficult, especially when you really need sound advice and like, here's what I'm thinking, and like, you're— that's soundboard. Does it take a while to figure out, okay, like, not maybe not who can you trust, but more so like trying to make sure you've, you've got the right people around you to, to walk through some of those real difficult times?
Oh, for sure. Uh, you know, one of my pet peeves is, uh, how, um, I'm generalising now, but yeah, I would say how, uh, people who live in an urban setting, uh, don't have sufficient respect for the complexity and the sophistication of the agriculture industry. And so I started many, many meetings through my whole 3.5 years or whatever it was as the Ag Minister by saying, assume I know nothing and explain to me, you know, what your concern is, what your issue is. And I'll try to be like a sponge. So it does involve a lot of intake of a lot of information. I, my personal experience is that the staff within the ministry are superb professionals and they provide the minister with a lot of great information and briefing. So I tried to be a good listener there. I don't really know that there were so many cases where I kind of got to be God and say, okay, I'm now going to decree that this is the way it's going to be, because there's always others who you have to collaborate with, talk to, achieve a consensus with. And then even within your own caucus and your own cabinet, even if you may have a position that you favour doesn't necessarily mean that people on your own team are going to. So, it's complex, involves a lot of, I guess, kind of massaging of the details and trying to achieve fair results.
Do you think being a lawyer by training assisted you in approaching it mentally that way?
I don't know, maybe. I definitely approached the job with a lot of humility because, you know, maybe that served me well that I didn't have an agenda when I was appointed. I didn't have a whole bunch of preconceived notions, so I tried to kind of wade through all of the facts and make reasonable decisions, which is, I guess, not unlike a process in justice. As a matter of fact, I would say that, you know, there's this saying in the judicial system that justice has not just to be done, it has to be seen to be done. And I would apply that, for example, when we're talking about food safety, you have to have food safety, but you have to have people believe that the food is safe. Yeah. And so to me, a lot of the work of the Minister is to try to build confidence and be supportive of the various industries.
Well, Shirley, you mentioned BSE. It is— we're recording this on May 20th, so it is the anniversary date brings up a lot of memories for everybody. I remember where I was sitting on our farm about to sign a deal on a skid steer, and I remember my uncle calling my dad and saying, hey, you're gonna want to turn the TV on, right? And, oh, and then shit hit the fan. Um, okay, so BSE arrives without warning, okay, and within days the American border is closed to Canadian cattle and remains so for quite some time. And it really halted the primary market for Alberta's beef industry just like that. And we're buying beef out of the back of reefers and Safeway parking lots. We're going to eat our way out of this. Take us back to the moment you understood the full scale here of what was happening and the challenge that was in front of the province and beef producers.
Well, I can tell you exactly where I was when I got the call that we had a positive. I was on Ellerslie Road heading south, going home to the farm for the long weekend in May, looking forward to a break. And I can tell you, I understood immediately what the enormity of it was because there was a positive in Alberta in the '50s, if you remember. Well, you wouldn't, but you might remember hearing about it. It came— it was in a purebred herd, and I think the animal came from another country in, and so it was handled a little bit differently. But we did understand and remember the border was to be closed for 7 years. That was the— that was the OIE, the Office of International Epizooties. That was the rule. And here's the other thing, I think we have to try to put this into perspective of how quickly this came together. I had over 60 people in the room designing and agreeing to a program. So it was announced May 20th, Lyle Van Cleef was Minister, Ag Minister, and I announced it in Edmonton. On— in June, uh, we had a program, uh, but so what we had was we had a, a premier who did not have any interest, background in agriculture, and did not understand, in his words, you know, the ag programs. He kind of told me his eyes glazed over when I tried to explain them. Says something about my explanation. But, um, but what he, he did understand was the importance of that industry to Alberta. Yeah, it was, you know, billions of dollars, and the future— we were looking at expanding that industry. We were looking at becoming doubling in 10 years. So, so this was really serious. So he said, you get the industry together and get them to agree, and we will back you 100%. And I didn't have to go back and keep asking permission, which was a huge benefit to us. But you try getting 60 people, and— but we asked them to send only their leaders. We wanted decision makers in that room, and we had— I don't know, I don't remember how many meetings, not a huge number, but the last one was at the Airport Hotel in Calgary. And Premier Klein was going to a ministers— first ministers— Western First Ministers meeting in a week, and he wanted to have this. And I can remember going into that meeting and telling them that I needed an answer by 3 o'clock. And somebody at the back of the room said, "Well, what if we don't have one?" And I said, "Well, then I'll come back at 6:00." And if we don't have one then, I said, "We're not leaving this room until we do have it." Oh, I like it. And I was lucky. I had the Finance Minister with me. That carried a little more clout probably than I did. And you know what? They came up with it. So, was it perfect? Probably not. Really wasn't, but it was so quick because, as I tried to explain to my counterparts, the urgency was you— this is a product that you can't keep. It has— when it's ready, it's ready, and you can't stack it up like cordwood somewhere and put it away. So when you look at that, so 7 years the border should have been closed Shaun, in the fall of the same year, we were sending boxed beef into the U.S. And in 2005, 2 years later, the borders were open. So how did that happen? Well, one thing is that we had, as Bourgault said, very sharp people in agriculture and also in what was international and intergovernmental affairs. Who understood all of these trade things, and they realised that the protocols were so outdated that they needed to be brought. So there were— the industry can come together. I mean, there was bison, and there was the dairy industry, there was the rodeo people, there was, you know, you name it, they were all there, and they came through.
And thankfully so. Yeah, you know, Verlinde, we'll stick on with livestock emergencies. XL Foods recall, it struck at multiple pressure points simultaneously. So we've got, you know, food safety, producer livelihoods, a processing sector whose operations were suspended, and again, Canada's exports impacted with all of these exports, right? It's such a critical thing for the industry. How did you triage all those competing priorities? Because I'm assuming everybody wasn't on the same page or weren't looking for the same outcomes. How did you do that?
Well, I think everybody was concerned about the impact it would have on them. For example, our producers needed to have a plate— like the XL plant and the plant at south of Calgary, uh, near the place— escapes me right now. Yeah, High River. Yeah, the High River. Those two plants, uh, accounted for a huge percentage of, uh, the Alberta beef processing. And those are federally regulated plants. So XL is a federally regulated plant, which means the CFIA was It was kind of their show. We were certainly involved, but also Alberta Health and other provincial departments were involved. So this is again an example of where there was a lot of communication between various levels of government and various ministries. So, it wasn't a situation where I was like calling the shots or making final decisions, but we were working hard at staying in close touch and communicating with our own stakeholders and hearing from them, giving them information. And as I say, you can imagine that our producers were very concerned, but then there's all the people who work in that plant in Brooks, and their jobs were at stake. And then what's the impact on the community. You know, it'd be devastating for that community to lose that plant. So in some sense, I think we were all on the same page because we all just needed that plant open and running. And it took some months, but, you know, I'd say a lot, probably a major part of our role was constant communication with Minister Ritz's office to encourage them, encourage CFIA, and try to get the thing back up and running. I think it was probably into the new year. This all happened in the end of August, I think early September, and it was probably January, January, February before we were kind of back to more or less normal. Yeah, but it happened in a progression over a number of months.
As you were going through that, I was thinking that that was— that when you mentioned Minister Ritz, I— it was the Maple Leaf plant issue where he said death by a thousand cold cuts. It wasn't— I had my head— it was XL Foods, but it wasn't.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, when—
can it be difficult, Verlan, to keep all those parties like aligned, like realising they have different interests or they maybe potential different outcomes, but kind of keeping them all like sort of in the same tunnel together as, as much as possible?
Sure. Uh, and you know, um, some stakeholder groups tend to maybe have louder voices than others. It depends on personalities and that type of thing. Again, I felt it was important to hear everybody. Didn't mean that you necessarily would be able to give them what they're asking for or even necessarily agree with them. I can't think, I did have some situations where some related to the beef industry, some related to other industries where we had to be a little bit more kind of firm and say, we need you guys to work this out amongst yourselves. And if you don't, then my promise is I'm going to make a decision that you're both going to be very unhappy because I'm going to go out of my way to do that.
Right.
So far better if you can put some water in your wine and kind of resolve things. Sometimes that's not possible because it's not within their ability to achieve those results. So, you know, I think you have to be prepared to hear the concerns of people because they're all— they're in a tough industry. It's unforgiving. It's full of uncertainty, full of things beyond all of our control. And you have to you have to listen and be as supportive as you can, but hopefully they'll understand that you can't just snap your fingers and solve all their problems.
Yeah, so far, if we're putting together a list of things you need to do as an agronomist, be a good listener, and two, have the Minister of Finance as your sidekick. That's what we—
yeah, that really helped, really helped.
Very helpful, very helpful. Shirley, I'm just curious, like, When you were doing the drive and you first heard about the case of BSE, did you understand the gravity of it immediately or like just talk to me about like that first 24 hours, just what it was like, where it was like, where it really hit that this is not good?
Well, it was really awful because I couldn't talk to anybody. I mean, I was going home and I did go home, but it was a very lonely weekend because I was afraid to talk to anybody because this, this was not confirmed when I heard about it. And we had a sample had to go to— we found it in our own testing. A sample went to Winnipeg and then another sample went to Weybridge, England. To confirm it. All of this happened on that 3-day weekend. So my department did really understand it, and, and I had been Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations ahead of this one, so I had a pretty good idea of a lot of the trade, uh, implications which, but as I say, it was, it was very, very, very lonely. You couldn't talk to anybody because it wasn't confirmed. And but once it was, I could tell you people came together. Neil Yankie was the president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association. You would know who he is. Yep. And Arno Dirksen was the president of the Alberta Cattleman's, and I'm trying to think of who was president of the Stock Growers, because the Western Stock Growers were very active at that time too. And, and while there were lots of others that helped, um, those— I've got to say, the leadership there was tremendous. And especially when Saskatchewan came on side with us and said, you know, we're, we're on side with you. And BC had a smaller amount, more dairy than anything else, but they just said what Alberta does, we will do. That was their decision. But, um, yeah, and, and I mean, Father's Day, so May 20th we get the positive, June the 8th I think it was, Father's Day, we, um, wrote up the proposal that Prime Minister Klein took to the ministers that week. That's pretty fast for as complex as this industry is. Now, there were lots of pieces that were developed more fully, but we had to have an immediate response. And because it's a shared responsibility, this had then go to the rest of the, of the country, but it was really Alberta that was charged with leading the charge and developing the program.
So, yeah. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead.
No, I was just going to say it felt like a very lonely time at times because you were— I think during the time of BSE, we had 3 elections in other provinces.
That couldn't have helped.
It did not help. It was, it was very awkward. And almost all, well, without exception, they had to go back to their Treasury Board to get permission to, because this, this was costly. Even though, because it was a disaster, the feds pick up a larger amount, but it was still costly to those provinces.
Well, you want to talk about costly, think about if that happened today, May 20th, 2026, and what cattle are worth. Surely you have more friends than just the Finance and Treasury.
Definitely do. Yeah, no, it— but I think we're in better shape to handle it today than we were in 2003. Yeah, I think we've learned. We— that's the one thing that I will say about the agricultural community. They, they learn and, and they work through it. They're also risk-takers, um, they're, you know, and they're not afraid to try something new or to step out. Uh, they, for something as bad and serious as BSE was, it had the opportunity to decimate the whole country, um, or the whole province's industry. Uh, they didn't they didn't really panic. They dug their heels in and got to work, and like I say, virtually 3 weeks, had a proposal. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
And probably if you look at across all these different challenges and crises, um, that was kind of the reaction probably for a lot of the stakeholders, you know, especially the producers, I think. Verland, wouldn't you agree with that?
Yeah, it's, again, it's got to be depressing and terrifying to see potentially your life's work just go poof like that when you've got people relying on you for everything a family needs and a community needs. So While I'm kind of thinking about this stuff, something Shirley said earlier that I just wanted to kind of follow up on, and that was the growing forward to, you know, like lessons learned and what's important, what's not important, what direction should we take. Well, you know, again, I was appointed in May of 2012, and one of the first things I was told was you got to go to yellow or to Whitehorse in September to kind of finish the negotiations for the new Growing Forward 2. I barely knew what Growing Forward was. I really had no— I was pretty much like Premier Klein, probably. And so we spent the summer between the rats and XL touring around the province, hearing from producers and farmers. You know, what's important to them, what's their pet peeve, what do they want to see changed. And I think this kind of speaks to what Shirley was mentioning. I think part of the messaging we got was we need to have more support for research and kind of new technologies, advancements. I think that's part of the entrepreneurial spirit. Doing things, you know, building a better mousetrap kind of a thing. And that, I think, found its way into some of the new programming and growing forward too. But that wasn't an idea that came from government. That was, you know, the impetus was the people who were on the ground doing the work.
Yeah, very well put. So, Brilyn, you, you came into office and, and then as you mentioned, you faced the 2013 Southern Alberta floods, which I remember. And what happened, like, I just remember— there's still pictures I've seen of Paradise Canyon Golf Club along the river and where that water got to, and the mark is insane. And then you got the, the grain transportation breakdown.
It—
that all kind of happened very close together. Looking back, which one of those felt most beyond your control? And which one do you feel the system handled better than it actually gets credit for?
So they're both weather-related, again, so they're both, you know, like the flooding obviously was, and the grain transportation was at least in part because of bad conditions through the mountains. It also related to bumper crops, lack of power, lack of engine, diesel engines, and lack of rail cars. So probably the flooding was the one that was more purely beyond our control. I asked— Ashley was very proud of our department in both of those crises, I thought we did really good work. Like in the flooding, again, multiple— that was virtually every government ministry, because whether it's finding a new place for kids to go to school or, you know, healthcare, hospitals, transportation, municipal affairs had, I think, had the lead on all of this stuff. And we were, I can remember lots of talk about mobile pumps moving around that our department had access to, and also AFSC as a tool to help with some programming and financial support, that type of thing. So I think we did really good work, but that was an all hands on deck event, all of government was totally committed to the cause. The rail transportation, I would say we were more alone on that from a Government of Alberta perspective. So I would say we were more the lead ministry, but here we were working very closely with Minister Ritz and the other western provinces So a collaboration government to government, and I think we had a significant influence. We had a very good relationship with the federal ministry, and I think it was pressure from us and other provinces that achieved some changes to federal legislation that would put— get the rail companies a little bit more interested in helping because frankly, they seemed somewhat disinterested in our problems to begin with. But the legislation helped with that. But it was federal legislation. So I, I speak with kind of great fondness of the work of our ministry in both of those events. But probably the rail one, we had a little bit more impact alone.
Yeah, you know, when you're in a situation where you've got to convince other provinces or the feds that, hey, this is actually a problem and it's a— it can be termed as a crisis, then the quicker you get to where everybody realises and admits that, you get to the solutions. It's when you have to, quite frankly, waste a lot of time, yeah, convincing people that this is a problem and here's why you should be worried. That, like, there's big differences there, Verlan.
Yeah, and it was really— the grain was really hurting our international reputation. We were losing some market share or facing the threat of losing market share. I remember going to, for example, to Japan, and at some points of that, it felt like a bit of an apology tour, you know, trying to explain, you know, why it is that they— we can't deliver the grain that they have been expecting. And, uh, um, it was a somewhat uncomfortable experience.
Yeah, for sure. Now, Shirley, BSE, we talked about where there's like a defining moment, you get a phone call, okay, we've got a problem. But then there's also like others where it's more of a slow-moving, gradual sort of evolution. And like the late 1990s, '90s brought a prolonged farm income crisis driven by collapsed grain and oilseed prices and aggressive subsidy competition from the US and from Europe. That was slow-moving emergency type and not necessarily like a single event. And there also is no clear ending point either, like border reopens and things like that. How do you govern effectively through a crisis with no definable beginning or no visible resolution end point? Point?
Well, I think that's— I think that's the time period that I— where I think we really started to improve our safety net programs.
Okay.
And so the difficulty is understanding what you can do that will help, not perpetuate a problem, but really help keep the the wheels on the bus, if you wish. And whether it was interest yielding or maybe per acre payments or however, uh, and again, the difficulty is the industry itself is so diverse. But, and that, that's a blessing in many ways, but it's also a challenge when you have crises like that because there's just not one answer.
Yeah.
And again, you have a shared responsibility with federal government. So whatever you're going to do in those areas, you have to convince them that this is, this is important, um, as well. So I think that was the real difficulty in, in dealing with with the crisis. But I think coming out of that, I think we're better today than we were. I, I think that my grandkids can step out and farm in a world that's so totally different than it was then. I mean, we weren't paying half a million dollars for a combine, you know, we weren't exposing the number of acres that they do today. This farming today is not for the faint of heart. You have to be very courageous and smart.
Optimistic.
Yeah, and optimistic. But, and the other thing that I think all of these things have done for us is we've understood better the importance of research. It used to be very hard to get research money, but I think we see the value in research and what it's done to stabilise our agricultural industry, and you see a lot more support for it now. But income support programmes are probably the most difficult to deal with, and we've had a series of them, whether it was feed Remember, we had, you know, no feed, so we had pay programs. Well, somebody is always on the wrong side of the line if you drew boundaries. It was, I think, like that in the flooding too, Verlin. Like, it was, it was the degrees of— because one area would be flooded right out and another one would be 50%, another one might be 25%, all important. So I really think that we're better. So early we had ADAC or AADC actually, I'm sorry, you shouldn't use acronyms with me, and we had Alberta Hay and Crop. Today we have Ag Financial Services. So we brought these things together and you're looking at them more holistically. And you're looking at them on individual producers' basis. So if my young people today that are in farming, they make decisions that I would never even have dreamed of in planning what they're doing. I always say that we didn't leave the farm, the farm left us. It got it, you know, the, the technology and the things like that just, uh, it took some of us old folks out of it. But so they know, they know what they're— the input that they have, they have a way of understanding, of ensuring if they're doing their job that they will have an output that will, uh that will cover that.
Yeah, and Verlyn, through all these, I think it's— producers are independent people, right? They're entrepreneurs, right? And they want options and choices they can make for themselves in order to manage some of the risks to fend against some of these major challenges that we've been talking about.
Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think that was the feedback that I was referring to that we had gotten in the lead-up to the Growing Forward 2 negotiations is give us more research, give us more tools, as opposed to what some would describe as handouts. And that is because People are proud and they're fiercely independent. And so I guess that's the role of government to try to facilitate that. But as Shirley has indicated, there's never enough money to go around for even righteous ideas and programs. So it always involves some prioritizing.
Yeah, and we've talked a lot about the federal provincial dynamics. Sometimes it's kumbaya and sometimes it's, uh, you're gonna need to sit down for this conversation kind of thing. But Roland, you were at the helm for the Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act, um, trying to deal with some of the— which was emergency legislation, I should say, to compel the railways to move prairie grain I guess, did you feel that Alberta's producers' interests were adequately represented in those negotiations with Ottawa and the rail companies at that time, or did you have to push really hard to make sure that their feelings were heard?
I think, like, I feel very lucky to have gotten to work with Gerry Ritz. Became good friends and seemed to see each other in many places around the world. And I— we were on the same page on a lot of stuff. So I never did have to have any kind of big battles with the federal government in that sense. If anything, I suppose it would be just timing. Like we— I think Shirley mentioned at the outset, we tend to be impatient. Impatient and we wanted some action and we wanted it like yesterday and, you know, waiting for federal legislation to get passed, that's not usually an exercise in snapping your fingers. So I never sensed that there was any impediment from them. We were on the same page. We're all frustrated that the grain wasn't being removed, but as they often say, devil's in the details.
Yeah, okay. And Shirley, we mentioned the elimination of the Crow benefit. Depending where you are geography-wise, you're gonna have different feelings about this.
You bet.
Yeah, I'm from southern Alberta, so I have one perspective. Others in the north would have another. So there is trying to manage stakeholder interests. That's a good— that's probably a great example right there. Talk about dealing with that situation.
Well, it was tough because they were, as you say, very competing opinions in Alberta. There was— Alberta producers were not on the same page in their entirety. Some thought AgCO should go. Some thought it should never go. Now, I don't think we had as big a difficulty as Saskatchewan because they were primarily a grain-growing province, and this was very significant for them. But what happened with the Crow had a significant impact on what agriculture is in Alberta today, and I think our producers have better options today because what it did for us, first of all, it, um, we have what they call feedlot alley. So that was really a big part of developing the feeding industry, both for cattle and for pork mainly. I mean, it was bigger on cattle because you weren't shipping your barley out of province and the— and commanding a higher price for it. So it was being fed at home. You, you have canola, I— and you have mustard, and you have peas, and you have lentils, and you have, you know, things like that that are being grown now that weren't I remember going into southern Alberta to a farm where they were growing mints.
Yeah.
And showing me how they were beating the transportation system by processing them. It looked like a still on the flatbed truck, you know, but they were distilling this down to a cask that they were sending off in an aeroplane instead of sending the raw product. So, I think it changed the face of agriculture. I think it was tough on the folks who were straight grain farming initially, but I think they took their lumps and they changed the processing. So, we had canola processing, we have mustard plant, we have pea plants now. You know, at least it gave us an opportunity to do more processing in the province. And I think there's room for a lot more yet. And it is coming and it will come because, as I said at the outset, we have risk takers in agriculture. These are, these are people that are not content just to do what we did 20 years ago. They're looking forward all the time. What can I do?
Yeah. So Verlyn, curious, if you were advising today's agricultural leaders, because we've talked about a lot of different crises today. These aren't the last ones. Like, let's be honest. I got a question for you. Thinking back to all of the crisis we've talked about here today and some of your personal experiences really behind the lines trying to deal with them, what advice would you give to today's agricultural leaders?
So speaking of agricultural leaders, I, for some reason, the canola growers keep on inviting me back every year to speak to their young leaders. They have a wonderful few days in Edmonton where they take about two dozen young canola growers and talk to them about governance, decision-making, how to speak to government, how to lobby government, and so on. And I really get kind of a charge of adrenaline out of that experience when I do it. And so I get asked that type of question, what advice would you have? And it's, this is kind of about group decision-making. It's not specific to agriculture, but those same people could be working with their Ag Society or with their minor hockey organisation or their church council or whatever it is. And when I was a cabinet minister, both in Justice and in Agriculture, I bought this book that I gave to everybody on my executive team. And it's about group decision-making. At least I, I made it about that. It's called The Opposable Mind, written by a guy at the Rotman School at the University of Toronto. And it's an analysis of how super successful people make decisions and about integrative thinking. And so you keep on processing a question until you come up with a superior answer. So it's not binary where like you reach a fork in the road and you take this fork or that fork. You keep on processing until you come up with a superior third option that maybe has the best of the two forks in the road. And I was— you may have heard of Peter Trzaski, and I ran into him at the Calgary Convention Centre for some meeting one time, and I was telling him about this. And he said, oh, we have that in our office. We call it the designated jerk. And I just love that term. And I've been promoting it ever since, that keep on analyzing, keep on challenging until you come up with the best solution. And for example, in government, but again, you could apply to any group of people who are making a decision. You shouldn't just go by the loudest voice in the room who speaks first. You should keep on— first of all, you should be enabling and encouraging people to be contrarians, to say, wait a minute, you know, I think we should be doing it a different way. And think of a government caucus, for example. You've got— you may be, you know, 20 or so people in the caucus who are in cabinet. But you've got everybody else who thinks those aren't the smartest 20 people. Some of us would be making way better decisions. But you don't really want to stick your head out of the foxhole and be a contrarian or you'll never make it to cabinet. Well, I would love to see the leadership in any group, any party, encourage those backbenchers to challenge ideas, maybe even assign a different group of people, like every piece of legislation. I want you guys to rip it apart and bring it back to us with all the things that are wrong with it. That would maybe help avoid the embarrassment of tabling something and having it hit the floor and then everything hitting the fan, and then somebody saying, "Why didn't any of us think of this?" So I love the idea of encouraging people to be a contrarian when it comes to group dynamics and groupthink. I think you get better decisions all around. So that's what I've kind of been promoting to any group I talk to, and I think it would work beautifully in government.
Yeah, well put. Shirley, how about for you? What advice would you give?
Oh, I don't really have set advice. My advice is to support research going forward, support new ideas, Don't be complacent. The world is changing faster than we could have ever imagined. I mean, when you are my age, which is much more than either of you two, you have seen these huge changes in just the agricultural industry. Of course, what we're talking about today, and that has mainly come about through often necessity. But research has, has got us through many of these things and, and will continue to do that. So I'm a huge supporter of, of research, whether— and Merlin of course faced more issues in food safety than I did because in BSE, no part of anything got into the food chain in that case. But, uh, those are the things that I think we have to support. I, uh, I spent 6 years at the university as a scholar in residence in Rural Development, after mainly some in the School of Business, but mostly in Rural Development. And I really had my eyes open And to the point that I think if we had better— did better in that, we wouldn't have as many worries about negotiating a new trade agreement, um, with our biggest trading partner to the south. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So let's wrap up with We talked about, you know, some real challenges here. Both of you though, while dealing with challenges, have also had to think optimistically and positively about the outcomes coming out of those and just what the future is for the industry. What gives you confidence about the future of Alberta agriculture, you know, despite some of the challenges that we have had and we're continuing to deal with to today. Verlyn, you first.
Well, I guess kind of my theme through all of this discussion has been it's all about the people and the relationships. And I think that the history of Alberta, the tradition in Alberta is, as Shirley suggests, entrepreneurial risk-takers, independent thinkers. And so to me, that's what would make me optimistic about the future, because we're largely— the people who are in the business are descendants of all of those people who have brought us this far. And maybe some of the new people in the business are perhaps they're immigrants or whatever, but they are risk risk-takers too. That's why they're here. And so I think we've got a great mix of people who can make this happen. And I think it's the job of government to not kind of lay it out for them, but to support them.
Provide the framework. Yeah. Not, but not get in the middle of all of it.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. Shirley, how about you?
So, here's my thinking that every crisis that I was involved with and that I think most, I could say almost every crisis has led to opportunities. And BSE led to new product on the shelf. That was part of our response, Shaun, was we could sell processed beef in a packaged, you know, like a teriyaki beef patty or something, where we couldn't sell the raw product. The Crow led to, I think, the biggest diversification in agriculture in Alberta that there ever was, with the feeding industry and the new crops. So I think that out of all of these crises has come an opportunity And then you come to what Verlyn said, it's the people and they are the ones who take these and run. They actually push us in government. They are so far ahead of us and sometimes it would get very difficult in trying to manage these expectations because they usually had to help. But we had the Leduc Processing Center, still do, and it did amazing things. I don't recall, but I think we had a programme through BSE where new product, and I think there was 14 new products on the shelf within 2 months. And then we did the incubator programme with that too. But those were things, those are things that happened because the producers pushed us. The people in agriculture are the movers and the shakers. So crisis, turn it into an opportunity. You've got the knowledge, the educated folks are smart, they're educated, and they're impatient, and I think that's okay.
Yep, it's the people and the attitudes that they bring that really make the difference. Well, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate both of you taking the time. I don't get to talk to two former Ministers of Agriculture at the same time very often. I really do appreciate ARDAR putting this together for this episode of The Final Mile. Would love your feedback as the audience if you have maybe some storeys to tell based on some of the that we talked about here today. Uh, we can all, uh, heal together and then experience some of them, like BSE for example. You can send me an email,
[email protected], or you can call the RealAg feedback line, 855-776-6147. Big thanks to ARDAR for being the sponsor of The Final Mile. Verlyn and Shirley, thank you so much for joining me here today.
Thanks.
Thank you. Enjoy this.
We'll see everybody in the next episode of The Final Mile. The Final Mile podcast on RealAgriculture.com is brought to you by Results Driven Agriculture Research. Find out more by going to rdar.ca.