If Prairie grain farmers were mushrooms, they would be thriving on all the attention they are getting from federal policy makers. After all, conventional wisdom is that mushrooms do well on a diet of pungent fertilizer and being kept in the dark.
This past winter, farmers were officially “consulted” on possible changes to grain marketing policy. Many came to meetings organized by the Western Grain Marketing Panel.
But a funny thing happened on the road to the panel’s written report.
As national correspondent Adrian Ewins noted last week, by any objective standard a Jan. 10 meeting at Kindersley and a Jan. 23 meeting in Swift Current displayed strong support for the Canadian Wheat Board.
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But the panel’s report said a key theme of both meetings was the need to have an alternative to marketing grain through the board.
Can anyone blame farmers for being cynical when that sort of thing happens? Bureaucrats, it seems, hear only what they want to hear. And even if an alert journalist catches them in the act, they can casually shrug off any unpleasant reports.
This latest rewriting of history and display of contempt for farmers is part of a long-established agenda. Whether for philosophical or personal interests, there are influential policy makers and publicity-seeking activists who want to undermine the board’s powers.
Now that the special panel has “consulted” farmers and submitted a unanimous report calling for major but poorly defined changes in the board’s powers, the road is clear for the federal Liberal government to make changes.
With western Reform MPs and the Alberta government screaming for even more extreme measures against the board, Liberal media managers could easily argue that they are being moderate even while they cripple a six-decade-old institution that has served farm families well.
Those farmers who support the board could always hope for national political leaders to take a stand on principle and, at the very least, make major changes in the panel’s recommendations.
Courageous political leadership, however, is in short supply these days.
In other words, farmers who support the board can count only on themselves. If enough of them speak out loudly, they can be effective.
But if they let anti-board forces dominate in letters, phone calls, personal representations and publicity events, then they are demonstrating their acceptance of the future those forces want to create for them.
It doesn’t matter what the silent majority wants if they remain silent.
