OTTAWA – Government-established rules for the February plebiscite on barley marketing are undemocratic and contemptuous of farmers, Reform MPs charged last week.
During a Commons committee meeting on grain issues Dec. 12, Reformers painted agriculture minister Ralph Goodale as an arrogant and divisive politician for refusing to give farmers more choices in the vote, including the dual market option.
“The minister must think that Canadian farmers are too stupid to decide whether dual marketing will work or not,” Alberta Reform MP Leon Benoit said after the meeting. “You have that debate during a plebiscite. Farmers are smart enough to figure out if it will work or not.”
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Added Saskatchewan MP Elwin Hermanson: “I believe you have missed the boat on that and that is why so many producers out there are desperate to the point of breaking laws that you support.”
Goodale continued to reject the proposal, arguing that he has “serious doubts” a dual market would work.
He said offering farmers “a menu of several fuzzy options” like dual marketing would be akin to “begging for a non-result.”
Instead, the government has decided the choice will be all-or-nothing: Should all export barley and domestic malting barley be sold entirely through the Canadian Wheat Board or on the open market?
Goodale said promoters of a dual market cannot define it, do not know if it would work and likely could not return barley to a board monopoly if the dual market experiment failed.
He defended his decision to ask a clear question to all barley farmers in February.
“I believe that a producer vote in this case is the most democratic and practical way in which to deal with what has become a very contentious issue,” he told the committee.
Denying the right
Reform MPs said that by limiting farmer choices and denying them the right to try a dual market, Goodale is guaranteeing prairie farm divisions will continue.
And by proposing Canadian Wheat Board legislation that leaves much power in the hands of the minister, the minister is not delivering on the democratic reforms he promised.
Goodale said he is willing to consider any proposals for change in the legislation that the committee offers, although the principles of wheat board changes proposed by the government cannot be changed. These include replacing the commissioner system with a board of directors, a majority of them elected by farmers beginning in 1998. Also included are changes to give the board more flexibility to pay out pools more quickly and to pay cash prices above pool prices if the grain is needed.
New Democrat MP Len Taylor criticized Goodale from a different direction.
He said there is no need for the plebiscite. Goodale is putting the future of the wheat board at risk and it will not resolve the issue, despite the minister’s assertion that the intent is to clear up the controversy.
“If the plebiscite is successful, the debate continues. If it fails, the debate on the future of the board continues,” he said.
If not through a vote, then how would the issue be resolved, Goodale asked.
“In my own mind, the influence of the minister supporting the board and moving ahead with strengthening the power of the board settles the argument,” replied Taylor.
