Another Time? Getting Agricorp Back to Chatham
Can you imagine an agency of government, which employs about 300 people, with seasonal employment of about 150 delivering $613 million across the province and having its home in Chatham Kent? In this part of Ontario that is hard to imagine, the recession that apparently is over runs deep in this part of the country. Having any hope with regard to economic opportunity seems so far away. Needless to say, Chatham Kent and southwestern Ontario were on the knifepoint of history back in the late 1980s as Agricorp almost came to be set up in Chatham Ontario.
I can understand how most of you would not even be aware of that. Our attention span for things like that is very small and if you were not involved in the farm community it certainly wouldn’t have been top drawer. Needless to say when the Bob Rae NDP government canceled the move of Agricorp to Chatham in the dying days of his administration, most of us never knew how much money went out the door.
At the time Agricorp was only an idea. It was being set up by government to take care of the crop insurance file for the Ontario government. That is where Ontario farmers were able to buy insurance for weather-related problems with their crops and the province was outsourcing the administration of that to a new agency called Agricorp. It ended up almost by default in Guelph Ontario, a super rich Ontario city that certainly didn’t deserve it. At the present time it takes up almost as much space in the greater Ontario government agriculture building on the corner of Stone Rd and College Avenue as the provincial ministry of agriculture. All of the financial spinoffs from such an agency are lost in a city, which has them to burn.
Meanwhile the majority of the benefits and the services that Agricorp delivers are in southwestern Ontario. At the same time the world is changed and regardless of how insane some Canadian agricultural policies are, Agricorp it is usually in charge of delivering them to Ontario farmers. This means that their scope and influence has grown I would bet tenfold over the years. Could you imagine such an agency being the crown jewel of a downtown business environment in the now moribund Chatham Ontario? It would certainly stand out a lot more than it does in Guelph and the benefits to the southwestern Ontario economy would be considerable.
Years ago when this decision was made Chatham-Kent’s mayor Randy Hope was a young and aggressive MPP for the area and he certainly worked hard to get Agricorp into Chatham. I remember at the time his disappointment when the news came over the radio that Agricorp would not be coming to Chatham. Years later I brought it up to him, now being mayor of Chatham Kent. We talked briefly about it and I have heard him mention it in media interviews over the past year. The bottom line is Agricorp should have been placed in Chatham, as it would have been a much better choice for regional economic reasons. Mayor Hope I believe is still working toward getting Agricorp moved back to where it should have been.
Critics of moving Agricorp to Chatham would certainly talk about the “synergies” that Agricorp would have with different agricultural organizations that are clustered on the Stone Road alley in Guelph. In fact two agricultural commodity groups have left Chatham in the last 5-10 years to set up in the same place. At the present time the corn wheat and soybean commodity groups in Ontario are joining into one group with their headquarters in Guelph. So in many ways Mayor Hope might find himself paddling uphill in his attempt to get Agricorp back on the Chatham landscape.
Some people might say my views about this are about spilt milk. I take the counter view; in fact I think it’s about vision, perseverance and being aggressive enough to not take it sitting down. Every time I go to Guelph and I go quite often when I see the different government agencies related to agriculture, which reside there, I think they should be in Chatham. I lived in Guelph for almost 7 years and it’s no heck. From my perspective Chatham Kent would be a much better choice.
Is it because Chatham Kent is geographically dysfunctional that we miss things like nabbing Agricorp? Or is it simply circumstance that we are where we are? I dunno. However there will be a next time and in the case of Agricorp there may be another time. Capturing these golden opportunities is something Chatham-Kent and southwestern Ontario can no longer afford to miss.