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Rural Southwestern Ontario is doubling its presence in Premier Doug Ford’s inner circle after a provincial cabinet shuffle split the agriculture beat in two.
The big news in Ford’s tweaked cabinet lineup was a two-minister job swap between Stephen Lecce, the education minister since 2019, and Todd Smith, who’s held the energy portfolio since 2021. But Thursday’s shuffle also broke the agriculture minister’s job into two parts, with a regular minister for each.
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Huron-Bruce MPP Lisa Thompson, who had been the minister of agriculture, food and rural affairs, will now be the cabinet point person on rural affairs.
MPP Rob Flack, who represents Elgin-Middlesex-London and had been associate minister of housing, becomes a full-blown minister, in charge of farming, agriculture and agribusiness.
For Flack, who worked his way up to the top in the livestock feed industry before making the jump to provincial politics in 2022, the cabinet appointment is something of a return to his roots, he said Friday.
“I feel like I’m coming home, in a way, to represent the people I worked with for over 40 years,” Flack said. He began as a sales trainee for Masterfeeds Inc. after he graduated from the University of Guelph in 1979 and rose to chief executive of the London-based company, a major supplier to livestock and poultry producers.
Flack said splitting the job that made up the former agriculture minister’s role in cabinet makes sense, with one minister focused on the economics and business of the sector and another on other issues and “unique needs” that come with living in rural Ontario.
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Among the issues in many rural areas of Ontario, including the southwest’s vast farm belt, are keeping small-town hospital emergency rooms staffed and open, growth pressures on farmland and keeping and attracting young people drawn to education and careers elsewhere.
Flack, whose roots in farming go back to working summers on his grandfather’s dairy farm in the Ottawa Valley, said he’s bullish on the province’s agri-food industry, a key economic driver in the wider London-St. Thomas area he represents and one he sees continuing to grow in Ontario.
“I’m ambitious to get hitting the ground fast and running,” said Flack, adding he’s a proponent of anything that can be grown and produced in Ontario.
bwilliams@postmedia.com
@BrianWatLFPress
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