It’s an incredible honour for me to be able to stand in the House today and pay tribute to John Keith Riddell, who no one in the rest of Ontario knows as John Keith Riddell; it’s Jack Riddell. I never had the opportunity to meet Jack, but as you’ll see in my remarks, we owe him a lot.

He was an auctioneer, and proud of it. There’s one thing about a livestock auctioneer that you need to understand: They perform a transaction between the owner/the seller and the buyer, and at the end of that transaction, both parties have to feel well treated. It’s an incredible skill, and if the auctioneer doesn’t do that, slowly the auction will fail. That’s how it works. It’s an incredible skill, and that’s something that is transferrable to politics, that skill of being able to make a deal, because an auctioneer makes a deal every time the gavel falls. That’s an incredible skill, a skill that when I read through Jack’s bio—a skill that he had.

He served from 1973 to 1990, and became agriculture minister in 1985. As the minister said, he brought forward legislation like the protection of farm products act and the Farm Implements Act. He actually brought forward the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission; he revamped it.

But to truly understand the impact that Jack Riddell had on agriculture and on the province, you have to think back to the 1970s, because the 1970s were golden in farming. Prices were high; interest was manageable. My father ran the farm at that time, and we bought and we bought and we bought. Then the 1980s hit, and everything stopped. Interest went to 20%, and that’s when Jack Riddell became Minister of Agriculture. You cannot imagine—I don’t think any of us can imagine the pressure of that.

I was just starting then, and those were the days of your neighbours getting foreclosed. The feds stepped in to stop foreclosures. And penny auctions: Your neighbours would gather around and stop the auctioneer, stop other people from bidding, because the whole neighbourhood was falling apart.

One thing I noticed in reading about Jack Riddell: He said at a local meeting that we won’t be able to save all farmers. That took guts to say that. It did. But he was the spokesman within cabinet that brought forward, first, temporary interest relief; then, more permanent interest relief; and a transition program for farmers who had to transition out of agriculture, which is a nice way of saying “who lost their farms.” It was incredibly tough. That’s why I’m so honoured to be able to recognize that—so honoured.

On behalf of the official opposition, and I think on behalf of thousands of farm families, of farms that Jack Riddell saved, including ours—we sold half our land. I took over the farm. I got my interest capped at 13% for five years—13%—but we made it through. We made it through because of representatives like Jack Riddell.

Thank you very much. We all know that no one does this alone. It takes a family; it takes a community. Families give up so much for family members who help everyone else. We know how much you’ve given up, but we can’t, on behalf of farmers all over Canada, express our gratitude enough. Thank you very much.