Oneil Carlier, the provincial NDP government’s minister of agriculture and forestry since May 2015 and deputy government house leader since February 2016, was unseated in his riding of Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland by UCP challenger Shane Getson, an energy project consultant and civil engineering technologist.

With 90 of 92 polls reporting, Getson was well ahead in the vote count, drawing 13,684 votes to Carlier’s 4,883.

With 7,148 of 7,328 polls reporting so far provincewide, the UCP was elected or leading in 63 of 87 ridings with 55.1 per cent of the popular vote, followed by the NDP in 24 ridings with 32.2 per cent of the popular vote.

Kenney, uniting the province’s Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose Party under the UCP banner, took the party to a decisive majority government, up from a combined 31 seats in 2015. The provincial Liberals lost their lone riding, Calgary Mountain View, to the NDP.

The UCP on Tuesday night was also the clear winner in the province’s rural ridings, elected or leading in all constituencies outside major cities.

With no shortage of rural MLAs, the UCP has several possible candidates to take over from Carlier on the agriculture file — even without former UCP agriculture critic Rick Strankman, who left the party in January to sit as an independent after he was denied the UCP nomination as its 2019 candidate for Drumheller-Stettler.

Strankman ran in that riding as an independent on Tuesday but placed a distant second behind the UCP’s chosen candidate, rancher Nate Horner, by a spread of over 14,000 votes with 99 of 102 polls reporting.

Other high-profile possibilities for the ag portfolio could include:

• rancher and former Canadian Cattlemen’s Association president Travis Toews, who won the riding of Grande Prairie-Wapiti over NDP challenger Shannon Dunfield;
• UCP finance critic Drew Barnes, who held his riding of Cypress-Medicine Hat over NDP challenger Peter Mueller; and
• infrastructure critic Glenn van Dijken, a grain grower, who held his riding of Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock over NDP challenger Therese Taschuk.

On the agriculture file, the UCP’s platform includes a pledge to introduce what it calls the Farm Freedom and Safety Act, to repeal and replace the NDP’s Bill 6, its Enhanced Protection for Farm and Ranch Workers Act.

The UCP, in its platform, pledges to “immediately launch comprehensive consultations with farmers, ranchers, agriculture workers and others on how best to balance the unique economic pressures of farming with the need for a common-sense, flexible farm safety regime,” but also to “ensure basic safety standards.”

It would require employers to maintain workplace insurance for farm workers, but allow employers to choose whether to buy insurance from the market or from the Workers’ Compensation Board, “as long as basic standards of coverage are met for such things as medical and return-to-work support services, and protection against loss of income.”

The UCP said it would also exempt small farms from employment legislation, defining “small” as farms with three or fewer employees over a “substantial period” of the year, not including family members.

On other ag-related files, the UCP said it will “streamline” the province’s crop insurance and farm lending agency, the Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC), to “improve services and responsiveness to farmers.”

It also pledged to “ensure that farmers, not government, set key agriculture research priorities” and to consult on future land sales “in order to replace good agricultural land lost to urban expansion.” –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Cypress County officials have identified the firefighter as James Hargrave, 34, a volunteer with the fire station at Walsh, Alta., about 50 km east of Medicine Hat.

Alberta’s Agriculture Minister Oneil Carlier on Twitter Wednesday identified Hargrave as the rancher who, as chairman of the Alberta Grazing Leaseholders Association, toured the minister and other provincial MLAs around his family’s ranch last fall.

Hargrave was also first vice-president of the Western Stock Growers Association, an Alberta ranchers’ advocacy group focused on free-market policies for livestock marketing and production and on environmental protection through range management practices.

Hargrave “was community-minded and joined the fire services to help and protect residents far and near,” Cypress County officials said in a statement.

“James’ love of Alberta was infectious and his priority was always to protect the land for the benefit of the community and future generations,” Medicine Hat MLA Bob Wanner said in a separate statement Wednesday. “He died as he lived, responding to the needs of his neighbours and his community.”

According to Lee Hart of Grainews, Hargrave managed a 50,000-acre operation spread over two ranches assembled by his great-grandfather, starting in 1888, and by his grandfather Bert, who also served in the House of Commons as the MP for Medicine Hat from 1972 to 1984 and passed away in 1996.

James Hargrave had lost his father Harry in a farm accident in 1996, his mother in 1989 and his sister following a riding accident in 2007, Hart noted in a 2009 blog post.

According to Redcliff RCMP on Wednesday, Hargrave and other volunteers were fighting a fire that ignited Tuesday in Cypress County near Township Road 180, about five miles west of Highway 41, and that spread eastward quickly on “high winds and dry fuels.”

Firefighters and RCMP evacuated the Alberta communities of Hilda and Schuler as the fire moved eastward into Saskatchewan, where Cypress County volunteers helped local counterparts fight the fire near the communities of Leader and Burstall, Sask.

During those firefighting efforts, a collision occurred between a water truck and a pickup truck, in which Hargrave — later identified as the lone occupant of the water truck — died at the scene, according to Redcliff RCMP.

“This tragic loss of life speaks to the danger that this emergency posed and also to the heroism of the volunteers who sacrifice in service of their neighbours,” RCMP said.

Homes destroyed in fires

Alberta’s Emergency Alert system cancelled the wildfire alert for Cypress County just after 1 p.m. Wednesday, reporting the “fire is out.” According to RCMP, four homes in rural Cypress County were lost to the fire.

Wildfire damage in the region Tuesday and Wednesday also included three houses destroyed on the Siksika First Nation, while a fourth had its roof blown off by “extreme winds.”

Two homes in Wheatland County were impacted by fires, along with one home and “several other small structures” at Moon River and three residences in Rockyview County, one of which was “totally destroyed,” RCMP said.

Three rail cars on a Canadian Pacific Railway line near the Agrium plant at Carseland also caught fire Tuesday evening, spreading to surrounding dry grass. Residents near that fire were evacuated to Strathmore and the fire was later contained.

Late Tuesday afternoon, “extreme winds” also blew 28 rail cars, carrying 56 freight containers, off Canadian National Railway track just south of Huxley, Alta.

According to Three Hills RCMP, no hazardous materials were spilled and no one was injured, but nearby rural residences were evacuated for about three hours as a precaution. CN staff have since recovered the rail cars and containers. — AGCanada.com Network

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Alberta-based Western Feedlots said Wednesday it will shut feeding operations early in 2017, citing poor market conditions and unfavourable economic factors in the province.

“The market we’re in now can’t get much more depressed,” said Martin Zuidhof, chairman of Alberta Cattle Feeders’ Association, a rancher who also runs a feedlot.

The price of young cattle is likely to face pressure, and if it leads to fewer cattle raised in the province, could jeopardize profits in the packing industry, he said.

The price of slaughter-weight cattle has dropped 30 per cent from a year ago.

Alberta’s two biggest beef packers, Cargill and JBS USA, declined to comment.

Barley and wheat are fed to cattle to fatten them for slaughter, and Western’s closure may also weigh on prices of those grains if feeder cattle numbers dip, Zuidhof said.

Canada is the world’s sixth-largest beef exporter, and Alberta raises more cattle than any other province.

Canadian cattle prices are mostly affected by U.S. prices and the value of the Canadian dollar, although domestic conditions play a role, said livestock industry analyst Kevin Grier. Consumer meat prices are unlikely to be affected by one feedlot’s closure, he said.

“In principle, it’s going to depress the demand for feeder cattle,” he said. Western’s closure may result in ranchers selling more young cattle to U.S. feedlots, he said.

Despite Western’s plan to stop fattening cattle, Alberta is not likely to lose more feedlots, the province’s agriculture minister said. Agriculture Minister Oneil Carlier said he spoke with a feedlot industry group last week.

“No one indicated that to me,” Carlier said in an interview. “There is good news on the horizon and I’m hoping the decision taken by Western Feedlots was… not going to affect the rest of the industry.”

Carlier said his government, criticized by Western, has supported the cattle industry, including increasing a loan guarantee program for producers.

— Rod Nickel is a Reuters correspondent covering the agriculture and mining sectors from Winnipeg.

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Premier Rachel Notley on Sunday named Whitecourt-Ste. Anne MLA Oneil Carlier to the now-expanded portfolio, which takes over responsibility for forestry from the department of environment and sustainable resource development.

Including Notley and 11 ministers — down from 16 and three associates under Premier Jim Prentice — the new cabinet was described Sunday in a government release as “lean and efficient… firmly focused on solving the challenges that face Alberta.”

The new ministers, the government said, “will partner with Alberta’s job creators — in energy, forestry, agriculture, high-tech, tourism and small business — to grow and diversify our economy.”

Carlier is one of several rookie MLAs who rode Notley’s Orange Wave into the legislature in the May 5 election, unseating Prentice’s party whip and caucus chair George VanderBurg, who’d held the riding for the Tories since 2001.

Raised on a cattle and grain operation at Val Marie in southwestern Saskatchewan, Carlier worked as a geotechnical technician for AAFC’s Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration from 1981 to 2002.

At PFRA, he was involved in “construction quality control” on projects such as southern Alberta’s Bassano Dam rehabilitation project and Crawling Valley irrigation project, and was also involved in union affairs with the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

Carlier — who now lives with his wife near Darwell, north of Wabamun Lake — later served in Edmonton as a PSAC regional representative for units including staff with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Environment Canada.

Opposition

In the legislature, Carlier will face a relative veteran in provincial politics, Drumheller-Stettler MLA Rick Strankman, who Wildrose leader Brian Jean named on May 11 as the official opposition critic for agriculture.

Strankman, a grain grower at Altario, Alta., northwest of Kindersley, Sask., and a former treasurer of the Western Barley Growers Association, has held the riding for Wildrose since 2012, handling critic portfolios including skills training and labour, culture and tourism, jobs, and Service Alberta.

Outside Alberta, Strankman is also known for risking jail time for his part in cross-border protests trucking wheat into the U.S. in 1996, in violation of the former Canadian Wheat Board’s single marketing desk on wheat exports.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper pardoned Strankman and 12 others from the Farmers for Justice group in 2012, after deregulating the CWB single desk.

Pledges

The provincial NDP’s platform leading up to this month’s election included a handful of general pledges for the ag sector, such as a review of federal rail and transportation policies for their effect on Alberta farmers, and a push for “reliable, sufficient, and fairly priced rail service to markets.”

The party also promised to “strengthen landowners’ rights for fair compensation and due process” in issues relating to surface rights; to “stand up for farmers’ rights to save and sell their seed;” and to “work with small producers to eliminate barriers to local food production and marketing.”

Notley also pledged a “green retrofitting” loan program to help families, farms and small businesses reduce energy usage affordably, and to “strengthen environmental standards, inspection, monitoring and enforcement to protect Alberta’s water, land and air.”

The NDP has also promised to end Prentice’s “costly and ineffective” carbon capture and storage plan, and to reinvest funds budgeted for the program in 2015-16 into construction of public transit. — AGCanada.com Network

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