It didn’t take long for Ontario’s new agriculture minister to put his stamp on the provincial agriculture department, at least on its title.
Former Masterfeeds CEO-turned-MPP for Elgin—Middlesex—London, Rob Flack jokes he will go down as Ontario’s shortest-tenured Minister of Farming, Agriculture, and Agribusiness, as that’s how he was introduced in Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet shuffle last Thursday.
With outgoing ag minister Lisa Thompson becoming the Minister of Rural Affairs, the shuffle not only marked the end of the department long known as the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA,) but it also left some people, including the new minister himself, wondering where “food” fit into the new arrangement.
“We felt as a team that [the new ministry name] needed to be changed. The Premier said, ‘good, change it,’ so we did,” Flack tells RealAgriculture’s Shaun Haney, in the interview below.
“I had to go and get reappointed again by our by the Lieutenant-Governor. We got the name ‘food’ back into the ministry name because we felt it’s important, because obviously, so many stakeholders are directly related to food processing, food marketing, and our exports,” explains Flack. “So it is now ‘Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness.'”
With that quick order of business complete, the new Minister of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness says he’s focused on getting up-to-speed with the role and its many files. He’s planning to embark on what he calls a “learning and listening” tour this summer and fall.
“As a government, we don’t grow food, we don’t process, we create the environment for success to take place, and whether it’s policy, whether it’s regulations, whether it’s food inspection, food safety, food security, there’re so many things that we do and need to do well, to support all stakeholders in the industry,” he says.
Flack says Premier Ford wants to put a lens of economic development in ag ministry to ensure that Ontario continues to attract investment and create jobs in the years ahead.
He says he understands the importance of investing in research and innovation from his previous career in the animal nutrition industry.
“It isn’t just government that does it or universities. We need to look at all aspects of research and innovation and support it. Having our curious minds continued with the great work is what this is all about,” says Flack.
Labour shortages, trade with the U.S. and other provinces, funding for business risk management, and the protection of farmland with pressures from population growth are among the issues on his radar, as he discusses in the interview.
Flack says he’s also looking ahead to the annual federal-provincial-territorial agriculture ministers’ meeting to be held in Whitehorse in mid-July.
Check out Shaun’s conversation with Ontario’s new Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Agribusiness, Rob Flack:
Related:
Ontario cabinet shuffle yields new Minister of Farming, Agriculture and Agribusiness
Sun sets on OMAFRA after 30 years
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