SASKATOON – Ralph Goodale’s options on how to deal with the Canadian Wheat Board controversy began to shrink dramatically this week.
For months, he has been fending off demands for policy decisions on the wheat board by counseling patience until the report from the grain marketing panel is complete.
This week, he is supposed to receive the report privately from panel chair Tom Molloy. It could be made public as early as next week.
For the minister, it is the beginning of show and tell time.
Read Also
Russian wheat exports start to pick up the pace
Russia has had a slow start for its 2025-26 wheat export program, but the pace is starting to pick up and that is a bearish factor for prices.
“Ralph Goodale could continue to delay, I suppose,” said Reform agriculture critic Elwin Hermanson. “But if he does not act on this report quickly, he would do himself damage.”
Alberta farmer Art Macklin of the Canadian Wheat Board advisory committee agreed the minister has painted himself somewhat into a corner, raising the expectation of action based on the panel report.
“Mr. Goodale has put most of his eggs in this basket,” he said. “If he does not like the eggs they hand him back by way of recommendations, he will have difficulty dealing with it.”
Some of the panel recommendations are expected to be broadly supported.
Hermanson said he has been told 95 percent of the report’s recommendations are unanimous. “I fully expect a recommendation on governance to make the board more democratically accountable to producers.”
On other, more contentious issues, release of the report is likely to mark the beginning of a period of even more intense debate and agitation.
Few expect the panel, whose members started off divided over the export monopoly issue, will offer clear answers to the minister on some of the key issues.
“My expectation is that on the contentious issues where there is no consensus, the panel will offer options,” said Macklin.
Larry Maguire, president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, expects the panel to offer a proposal, or at least an option, for a barley dual market.
“He will have no excuse for not moving on that,” he said. “I just can’t believe they will stall on this issue of how farmers can sell their own grain while the government has deregulated the air industry and privatized CN. Mr. Goodale has succeeded in turning a small issue into a big issue.”
Macklin, on the other hand, warns that any hint of moving toward an open market for barley will bring strong reaction from board supporters.
“If that comes up, farmers like myself will do what we have to do to let the politicians know this would not be acceptable,” said the veteran of farm demonstrations.
All of which leaves Glaslyn, Sask. farmer Jim Schick feeling uneasy.
He was involved in a letter-writing campaign to support the board. Although he said many thousands of letters were sent from across the Prairies, Goodale’s office says it received 2,600 since early 1994.
“I guess they all didn’t go to Goodale’s office,” Schick said last week.
He faces the release of the report with apprehension.
“I guess I’m always a little suspicious about panels that go to the country to gather information with a political motivation,” he said. “You never know who they choose to listen to.”
