Friday, January 11, 2013

Wise dead at 77


Former agriculture minister John Wise has died. He was 77.

He was a dairy farmer who was first elected to Parliament in 1972, won five elections before retiring in 1988 and was named agriculture minister when Joe Clark won a minority-government election in 1979.

It was defeated the next year, so his main contributions as agriculture minister began in 1984 under Brian Mulroney.

A significant immediate improvement came when he and Charlie Mayer, who was put in charge of the Canadian Wheat Board, ended the bureaucratic feuding between the two federal government offices.

They shooed the senior bureaucrats out of the room, reached decisions and then called the staff back in to tell them how things would be.

The feuding was intense when Otto Lang of Saskatchewan was head of the Wheat Board and Bud Olson, then Eugene Whelan, were agriculture ministers.

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz issued a statement, saying Wise “was also instrumental in the development of the Canada-U.S. Trade Agreement from an agricultural perspective.

“This included delivering transition assistance for grape growers, which laid the foundation for today's world-class Canadian wine industry.

“He was also successful in developing stronger federal-provincial-territorial relations to move the industry forward.

“While dealing with some difficult issues through his career, John was always open to debate—and, as one colleague recalls, he was "a gentleman throughout."

I recall a tense standoff with Wise when I was a reporter at the Waterloo Region Record.

He was sitting on the results of a study the agriculture department commissioned to determine the fatty-acids makeup of various types of margarine and butter.

A whistleblower leaked the results to me in a mailed, plain brown envelope. The Record ran the information on front page.

And Wise called in the RCMP to sniff out my source. They never did find it.

At the time long-chain fatty acids were considered the main culprit in heart disease, but this study also pointed a finger of suspicion at transfats. It now clear that those suspicions well founded.

Why all the secrecy? I think it’s because butter did not come off well in this study, because Wise was a dairy farmer and because the Quebec dairy-farmer lobby is brazen.

The funeral service is Monday at 1 p.m. at Knox Presbyterian Church, St. Thomas.