Lisa Thompson

Lisa Thompson serves as Ontario's Minister of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness — a portfolio that represents one of Canada's largest and most diverse agricultural economies, from the cash crop farms of Southwestern Ontario and the corn and soybean belts around London and Chatham-Kent to the tender fruit operations of Niagara and the greenhouse industry in Essex County that supplies a significant share of North America's hothouse vegetables. Ontario agriculture faces a set of intersecting pressures: land loss to suburban development continues despite the Greenbelt (the partial rollback of which under the Ford government created exactly the fears that agricultural land advocates had raised); farm labour has become increasingly dependent on the Temporary Foreign Worker program, which creates both operational and ethical issues around worker housing, wages, and mobility rights; and the consolidation of agricultural input supply chains means that fewer, larger companies control an increasing share of what farmers spend on seeds, fertilizers, and equipment. Thompson has represented the agricultural community's interests within a government that is simultaneously enthusiastic about rural Ontario's political support and sometimes casual about the land use decisions that affect agricultural viability. The tension between development pressure and farmland protection requires a minister who will push back on the rest of cabinet when development priorities threaten long-term food production capacity. Whether that pushback has been sufficiently vigorous is a fair question. She has maintained the confidence of the agricultural community more than the critics of the government's broader land use record, which suggests she has done something right within the constraints she operates in.