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.
