As agriculture minister Ralph Goodale once more stands with his finger in the wind, trying to figure out which way farmer opinion is blowing on the Canadian Wheat Board, he is beginning to receive some dangerous advice:
- Delay a decision on the future jurisdiction of the Board.
- Announce this autumn acceptance of recommendations to change the way the Board is governed. Give farmers more say.
- But defer a decision on marketing barley, on taking unlicensed and organic wheat out of the pool, on changing the wheat price pooling system.
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“If he takes his time, we’re into an election year and after that, I think pressure might decline,” a senior grain-sector player said recently.
“By then, prices might be down some and the pressure will decline with them. I think time is on his side.”
This would be political folly. The uncertainty and chaos that is building around the Board issue has the potential to harm the Board, the industry and the farmers who have a right to know the rules.
Goodale has built up too many expectations to dilly dally much longer. It is a story slipping dangerously close to farce.
Board critics are in full howl.
At the border there is growing lawlessness by a very visible minority. The future of the grain marketing system should not be decided in the courts.
There is defiance by a provincial government that can only weaken the already frayed bonds of the country.
And there is constant pressure from the Reform party that Goodale should simply throw in the towel.
While Reform’s view that Goodale should act with the stroke of a pen seems both naive and undemocratic, its approach appeals to those frustrated by the Board, the uncertainty, or both.
On the other side, the Board-weakening report of the Western Grain Marketing Panel seems to have been the two-by-four between the eyes that Board defenders needed as a wake-up call.
They are mobilizing, both inside and outside the Liberal caucus. They are speaking out and writing. They may be too late. The Panel report gave momentum to the campaign of Board critics. Goodale cannot ignore it.
It is a process he created in an attempt to keep the pressure under control until he could figure out a strategy to preserve the Board’s traditional powers.
Now, he has two choices.
1. He can accept that he, and Board supporters, failed to mobilize sufficient support and argument to defeat the drive to weaken or destroy the Board.
2. He can announce soon that while on some things, the Panel got it right, on others it was wrong and he will not accede.
Such a declaration would unleash a torrent of criticism and legal defiance that he and his government would have to be willing to stand up to, letting the voters judge them next year.
But he should do one or the other.
Continuing to play for time past the autumn parliamentary session should not be an option.
