Kelowna businessman, winemaker and rookie MLA Ben Stewart will be British Columbia’s new agriculture minister in a cabinet shuffle announced Monday.
Stewart, who co- founded and developed the Mount Boucherie winery Quails’ Gate, has served in three other portfolios since he became the MLA for Westside-Kelowna in May last year.
Premier Gordon Campbell’s latest shuffle also sheds the “lands” file from what until now was the ministry of agriculture and lands. Responsibility for lands, including Crown land administration policy, now rests with Forests, Mines and Lands Minister Pat Bell.
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Bell, the MLA for Prince George and a former ag minister, until Monday was minister of forests and range.
As ag minister, Stewart replaces fellow Kelowna-area rookie MLA Steve Thomson, who Campbell named Monday as minister of natural resources operations.
Stewart’s father Dick first put up vinifera vines at what was then the family farm near Kelowna in 1961, and recruited the younger Stewart to help develop the winery.
Stewart and brother Tony expanded the vineyard’s operations from a farm-gate winery to an estate winery, starting in the 1990s. Quails’ Gate now bills itself as “internationally recognized as a top quality producer of pinot noir and chardonnay.”
Stewart previously served as chair of the B.C. Grape Marketing Board, where he was credited with helping negotiate with provincial and federal governments on ag stabilization.
Also, as a past chair of VQA Canada, Stewart is credited with helping resolve “significant international issues” such as trademark protection and international mutual recognition agreements including national wine and health standards.
And as vice-chair of the Canadian Vintners Association, Stewart is credited with overseeing the association’s establishment in Ottawa offices and the hiring of its first CEO.
In Campbell’s cabinet, Stewart most recently served as minister of community and rural development and was previously responsible for citizens’ services, multiculturalism and the province’s Public Affairs Bureau.
In the lineup of new cabinet committees announced Monday, both Stewart and Thomson will sit on the provincial Treasury Board and on the environment and land use committee, which Bell chairs.
As natural resources operations minister, Thomson, the MLA for Kelowna-Mission, now takes on responsibility for a number of ag-related files, including Crown land restoration, allocation and authorizations, water use planning and authorizations, drought management, flood plain management and “pests, disease, invasive plants and species.”
Campbell’s shuffle Monday also sees a new top bureaucrat in the agriculture department, as former deputy public safety minister Wes Shoemaker becomes deputy agriculture minister.
Shoemaker was formerly an urban firefighter and fire chief and came to the province as an associate deputy minister for the province’s emergency management agency.
