Saskatchewan agriculture minister Eric Upshall was on Parliament Hill last week, promoting the idea that the Canadian Wheat Board should retain its monopoly marketing powers.
But as the minister who recently broke the Saskatchewan hog selling monopoly, Upshall found his own credibility being challenged by some aggressive opposition MPs.
Critics of the wheat board monopoly on the House of Commons agriculture committee confronted Upshall on what they saw as his CWB “socialism” and what they said was a contradiction in his decision to end the provincial hog monopoly.
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The result was some emotional, at times personal, sparring.
“You’re a piece of work,” Upshall muttered at one point after Brandon Conservative MP asked an aggressive question.
Later, the two men continued to joust.
“I’m really happy I live in Manitoba,” Borotsik said as he shook Upshall’s hand. “That’s all I can say.”
“So are we,” Upshall shot back.
Later, the Saskatchewan minister said his critics were leading with their ideological chins, rather than looking at what is good for farmers.
“I’m a pragmatist,” he said in an interview. “I support whatever I feel puts more dollars in farmers’ pockets. The wheat board does that.”
When pressed by Reform agriculture critic Jay Hill to justify what he saw as a contradiction in Saskatchewan’s stance, Upshall denied it. “There’s a great difference between the commodities and the circumstance.”
He said he was not bound by ideology to support marketing boards. He supports those that work.
And when Hill asked why Upshall would not support dual marketing for grain to give farmers an option as hog farmers now have in Saskatchewan, the minister offered a sharp response.
“Don’t pretend that’s an option,” he said. “It’s either open market or single desk. There’s no middle ground.”
The critics had their own harsh words to describe the Saskatchewan politician.
“I think it is hypocritical of him to come here to promote a monopoly when he just broke one in his own province,” said Hill.
“He has a socialist philosophy,” said Borotsik.
Upshall insisted the wheat board extracts more from the market for farmers as a single-desk seller than farmers would receive if there were many sellers.
And he insisted he represents Saskatchewan farmers in that view, despite opposition references to surveys that show a majority of Saskatchewan farmers prefer a dual market option – the wheat board competing against private companies for farmers’ grain.
Upshall said the two-thirds victory of the single-desk option in the barley plebiscite proves that most farmers prefer the board.
