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Green candidate Smith proposing ‘different thinking’

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Published on Friday, March 25, 2016

By Kate Jackman-Atkinson

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

The third candidate in the Agassiz riding to step into the race, Robert F. Smith is running for the Green Party.

The mixed farmer runs a section of land and has a herd of 25 cows, as well as growing oats and buckwheat.  He has been an organic farmer since 1999.

Smith is a long-time resident of Edrans, “I have never moved in my entire life. When I came back from my honeymoon 31 years ago last fall, mom and dad had moved to town.” He lives on the farm homesteaded by his family.

Smith’s mother’s family is from McCreary, and their farm, the Hutton’s farm, became McCreary. “I’ve got connections through the whole of the riding, I’ll have to go back see if people remember,” he said. 

Smith has served on a variety of local organizations, beginning as a member of 4H. He explained that he’s had a “lifelong commitment to small town”. He also served a long term as a school board trustee. In 1982, the then 22-year-old was elected to the school board. He served 20 years. “There’s very few people who are staying with it for that long,” he said.  

Smith said that running in the provincial election was “the next step” for him.  He ran as head of council in the last municipal election for the municipality of North Norfolk. During last year’s federal election, he toured Green Party candidate Kate Storey around.  With the changing of constituency borders, she is no longer in the Agassiz riding, meaning that there would be no provincial Green candidate.  “She encouraged me to run,” Smith said.

Being elected MLA has been a long-time goal for Smith, “Back in ’81 [when he was in the diploma of Agriculture program], I said that by the time I was in my 50s, I wanted to be an MLA and I hoped to be a cabinet minister. So it’s always been a dream, just got pushed to the side with farming and family.”

Smith explained why he wanted to represent the Green Party, saying, “I’ve met a lot of people, and Kate [Storey] in particular, who have talked a lot about the Green Party. It seems to mesh a  lot with my thinking. You want to do sustainable activities. Like instead of bulldozing a tree, why not log it? Then 20 years later, you can go back and log that same tree again.” He continued, saying, “Big business, if they create pollution or a bad situation, they should be the ones to clean it up. Why should government have to come in and clean up after they’ve made the money?… Everybody comes in and makes a big mess because it’s cheap and quick.”

Smith explained that the Greens are different, “The Green Party is based on a sustainable type of industry, sustainable type of farming… We can’t go to the horse and buggy days, everyone gives me the gears, ‘Oh I’ve got to park my car, park my tractor,’ and no, that’s not the Green Party. But there’s alternatives….There is a lot of concern, are we using more chemicals than we require?… Are we using the safest product for the environment, not just using the cheapest products?” 

As the campaign gets underway, education continues to be an area of importance to Smith. “My great grandfather, everywhere he stopped, he built school houses,” said Smith. “My grandfather was the trustee of the little school at the end of our lane and my father was a trustee there after he attended. It’s been a long line of school trustees.” His daughter graduates this year and his two eldest sons are planning to be teachers.

Smith sees the removal of school tax from farm land as a major issue. “Farm land doesn’t produce children, houses produce children. Therefore, you should tax houses, whether it’s a farm house or a rural residence.  That’s what school tax should be on.” He does, however, support the cap on school taxes rebate currently in place. “I don’t have any problem with the cap,” he said, “the rebate was for small farmers, once Hutterite Colonies and large farmers decide to own the whole countryside, should they receive their school tax? Because they're not a farm anymore, this is a corporation or a business. And should we be treating businesses the way we are treating family farms? No.”

Smith also sees the erosion of rural communities as a problem, saying, “I’d like to go back to the way it was in my childhood.  I know it’s not possible, but maybe we can save the weekends, maybe we can make the weekends like they were.  Monday to Friday we all have to rush off to work and the kids are off to school, but on the weekends, we can [be] together as a community?” He continued, saying, “[I’d] rather see seven 1,000 acre farms that one 7,000 acre farm.”

Smith would like to see an increased focus on long term improvements, not decisions motivated by short-term greed. He said, “Is globalization the best thing for us? What are we doing in agriculture? Should be we leaving more trees by the creeks so that they soak up all that fertilizer before it gets into the creeks?… It’s not complicated ideas. I’m thinking if I farmed more like my father and grandfather, and wasn’t so concerned that I had to farm 160 acres on 160 acres, could we not all leave 12 or 15 acres on every corner so that the wildlife has a little space to live in?”

He continued, saying, “If we make better decisions, like planting wind breaks and not knocking down those trees and leaving riparian areas. It’s a different thinking.”