Livestock leader McMorris calls it a career

Mike McMorris is a human transformer who can change a person’s outlook with a few words. The Livestock Research Innovation Corporation CEO has brought positive change to every position he’s held, say colleagues in the industry.

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“I feel so incredibly lucky that my career has been filled with awesome people. Look around,” McMorris said to attendees of the LRIC annual symposium. “You’re looking at awesome. I’ve been so lucky to work with all of you.”

McMorris’s retirement from LRIC was marked by a light “roast” from Randy Jackiw, assistant deputy minister of economic development with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness.

Each anecdote was a reflection of McMorris’s qualities and quirks like optimism, thoughtfulness, calm confidence and use of a leather candy bowl made from a bull’s scrotum, which he delights in explaining to a person after the candy is in their mouth.

“Mike likes educating through different methodologies,” Jackiw said with a grin.

McMorris graduated from the University of Guelph with a bachelor’s degree in animal science and a master’s degree in animal breeding and genetics. He spent 13 years with the agriculture ministry doing extension work before moving into management.

He earned the Amethyst Award, the highest level of peer recognition as an exceptional public servant within Ontario’s public service, for being an outstanding collaborator and leader.

“There was a positive culture and collaboration that was unique across the offices,” said Jackiw. “You could never not be impressed by Mike. He’s just unbelievably thoughtful and positive. He’s also extremely realistic and insightful.”

Jackiw said McMorris digs past symptoms to an issue’s core and engages others to strategize effective solutions.

In 1999, McMorris became the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association (now Beef Farmers of Ontario) executive director, and negotiated a complete organizational review. He was in that role during the Walkerton crisis and later the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis that brought Canada’s beef market to its knees.

McMorris implored Ken Knox, then deputy minister of agriculture, to attend a board meeting to develop strategies to weather the BSE storm. When the board said there was no time, McMorris had Knox ask for five minutes, knowing his ability to persuade would bring the room around.

It’s difficult to imagine a more difficult time for an industry, or to discount the importance that conversation had in changing the approach to the BSE crisis, said Jackiw. It was made successful by

McMorris’s decision to take a back seat to Knox.

“That is the highest level of leadership that you can get at, when you have no ego (and) the foresight to say there’s nothing I’m going to be able to say in this.”

After stints as Agricorp’s director of operations and AgSight’s general manager, McMorris joined LRIC in 2019.