A prairie critic of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly tried to drive a wedge into the government caucus last week by pleading with Ontario Liberal MPs to give prairie wheat growers what Ontario farmers soon will have – a marketing choice.
Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association president Larry Maguire suggested it is unjustifiable and undemocratic to impose a monopoly on prairie farmers when Ontario Wheat Board delegates recently voted to experiment with an export opt-out next year.
“By continuing to push ahead with Bill C-4, your government is saying that it is perfectly acceptable for 101 Ontario MPs to legislate for the West the very kind of regime that their own farmer-constituents do not want and have rejected,” Maguire said in a letter sent to all Ontario MPs.
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For his efforts, Maguire received a written rebuke from CWB minister Ralph Goodale.
The minister suggested the farm leader was being inconsistent and undemocratic to oppose legislation that will give prairie farmers a vote for directors and the ability to change the board’s mandate.
“You stand against the very legislation that would give western farmers the same flexibility that Ontario producers have,” Goodale wrote May 1. “You are also flying in the face of how producers in Ontario made their change, by means of a democratic vote, not a government edict.”
At the centre of the lobby effort, Ontario MPs seemed unmoved by Maguire’s appeal to their sense of fairness. Several said they had read the letter but still support government legislation. The bill will not change the monopoly for now, but leave decisions in the hands of directors, a majority of whom will be elected by farmers.
“It should be a farmer decision on where the wheat board goes,” said Murray Calder, a member of the House of Commons agriculture committee. “We are trying to give farmers more power to decide things.”
Rose-Marie Ur, also a committee member, said she continues to support the government bill: “So far, what I have seen and heard tells me it is the best approach.”
It was the latest in the fierce political battle that has been waged over CWB reform legislation.
The Senate agriculture committee this week is meeting in private to consider what changes to recommend after weeks of hearings and study.
If the committee proposes changes and they are accepted by the Senate, the bill would have to go back to the Commons for another vote.
Maguire told MPs that if they look at the legislation again, they should consider the question of fairness.
“Eastern farmers have freedoms that western farmers do not,” he wrote. “In short, there are two classes of farmers …. It is fundamentally unjust.”
