The federal government is rejecting charges that its new Canadian Wheat Board legislation could re-establish board control over domestic interprovincial feed barley sales.
A senior Agriculture Canada official said late last week there is no need to change the wheat board legislation to make that point more clear to the skeptics.
“No changes are needed on this point,” said Howard Migie, Ag Canada’s director general for adaptation and grain policy. “That’s the legal opinion.”
Departmental lawyers were sent back to their law books last week after a number of critics of the proposed legislation said that, inadvertently or deliberately, the government is deleting the section of the law which authorized the 1974 regulation removing domestic feed barley sales from board jurisdiction.
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Representatives for United Grain Growers, the Alberta government and other supporters of a voluntary wheat board demanded Ottawa change the bill to make it clear this will not happen.
No change intended
They were unimpressed by Ottawa’s insistence that changing domestic feed barley rules was never the intent of wheat board changes.
“They are saying there is no intent but this is the government’s bill and you’d think they would have acknowledged it by now, officially,” said Blair Rutter, manager of policy development for United Grain Growers in Winnipeg. “Let’s hear from the minister.
“This section is being repealed and as we read it, there is no other section of the act which explicitly states that feed grain can be traded interprovincially outside the board,” said Rutter.
In Regina, provincial Progressive Conservative leader Bill Boyd said he doubted the confusion is simply sloppy writing. He suspects the federal Liberals were trying to sneak through an expansion of wheat board powers, hoping it would not be noticed.
“I think they’ve done it intentionally because they anticipate a loss in the charter (of rights) challenge by the Alberta Barley Commission and they want to gain control of the feed industry as quickly as possible,” he said Jan. 10.
Migie said the department’s reading of the legislation is different from that of the critics. The lawyers say other sections of the Canadian Wheat Board Act were the source of the 1974 regulation.
“These sections have not been deleted so the feed barley regulation is not affected,” he said. “That’s what the lawyers say.”
Beyond the legal interpretation, Migie said the policy intent of the government is clear.
“We are not putting forward as an option that barley for local feed use would revert to the board.”
