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Canada gets first female agriculture minister

-The Hagstrom Report
Marie-Claude Bibeau

A Canadian member of Parliament from Quebec on Friday became the country’s first female agriculture minister.

She replaces Lawrence MacAulay, who left the job to become minister of veterans’ affairs and associate minister of defense, replacing Jody Wilson-Raybould, who resigned from the cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after accusing Trudeau of secretly attempting to direct her handling of a high-level criminal prosecution.

The new minister for agriculture and agri-food is Marie-Claude Bibeau, who has been minister for international development.



“It’s a huge privilege. I come from a rural riding — a dairy riding actually in the south of Quebec — so I’m already very close to the agricultural producers in Quebec,” Bibeau said.

“I know quite a bit about supply management and I really look forward to working with the agricultural producers on various issues,” she said following Friday’s swearing-in ceremony.



Less than weeks ago, MacAulay, who represents Prince Edward Island and has a farm that Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has visited, traveled to Washington to give the keynote address at the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum with Perdue and Mexican Secretary of Agriculture Victor Villalobos.

The cabinet mini-shuffle and the controversy over Trudeau have been the subject of extensive coverage in the Canadian media.

A second minister in the Trudeau government has resigned, The New York Times reported today.


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