New Ontario Liberal Party leader Kathleen Wynne reaffirmed her promise on Wednesday to serve as Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs upon being sworn in as Premier of Ontario next week.
The Don Valley West MPP had stated while campaigning during the Ontario Liberal Party's 2013 Leadership Convention that she would appoint herself as the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for at least one year in an effort to help the Liberals reconnect with rural Ontario after the party lost support over multiple issues effecting the province's rural regions, including the cancellation of the Slots-At-Racetracks program.
“I am very serious about this,” Wynne was quoted as saying about her promise in a Toronto Star article after touring a vegetable processing plant on Gwillimdale Farms near Bradford, Ont. on Wednesday. “I have made it my business to get to understand what goes on in rural Ontario and in the agriculture community.”
Wynne went on to explain her connection to rural Ontario as a fifth generation Ontarian, stating that her father spent every summer on a farm in Watford, Ont., and his family still farms that land.
“So my roots go deep into rural Ontario and even if they didn’t, we need to understand as urban people how inter-related we are," she said as skeptics questioned her ability to overcome a learning curve as the agriculture minister while serving as Premier.
New Democrat House Leader Gilles Bisson stated that he hoped Wynne was not just paying "lip service" to rural Ontario with her promise to serve as the agriculture minister. "It's really going to come down to can this new premier, this new minister, actually turn the page on a pretty sorry history that this government has had with rural Ontario,” he was quoted as saying in the Star article.
Wynne and her cabinet will be sworn in Feb. 11 at Queen’s Park. The legislature is scheduled to resume on Feb. 19.