FOR years, grain industry analysts and executives who have extolled the virtues or necessities of consolidation, industry alliances and north-south partnerships, have left an important part of the argument unstated.
In part, they have been preparing their companies for the day when there is no Canadian Wheat Board export monopoly for wheat and barley.
They are preparing themselves to compete in those export markets, as they do now in non-board commodities.
When the dust settles on this issue, last week’s Agricore and United Grain Growers merger agreement likely will be seen as an important development in the debate.
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The new Agricore United almost certainly will carry the anti-CWB theology of UGG into the new, stronger, bigger company. And it is difficult to imagine that Agricore’s newspaper, Manitoba Co-operator, the most consistent, eloquent and aggressive media defender of the wheat board under the editorship of former board spokesperson John Morriss, will be given rein to continue its orderly marketing arguments if it is owned by a company run by chief executive officer Brian Hayward.
Who will be left to defend the practices and principles of the board, other than the CWB itself and the National Farmers Union? Not Saskatchewan Wheat Pool or any companies who have been locked in battle with the board over grain transportation.
Not the few other relevant farmer groups, most of which are either decidedly anti-board or neutral.
Of course, it would be foolhardy to predict the outcome of a political debate still being played out, particularly one as rooted in history, ideology, emotion and economics as the debate over the CWB. But it is fair to say the board’s future as a state-sponsored monopoly exporter is under increasing threat.
Economically, the prairie agricultural economy is less dependent on wheat board grains. Wheat remains a huge crop, of course, but the board’s activities are not as vital to the survival of western agriculture as they were a generation, or even a decade, ago.
In the system, the board now has few staunch friends and many enemies.
Politically, the farmers who turn out for board elections have tended to favour candidates who support the monopoly but again, the evidence is of softening support. Two anti-monopoly directors now sit on the board.
In Ottawa, the governing Liberals continue to support the board’s marketing role, as does the New Democratic Party. But truth be told, Liberal support is not deep. Remove a few key board supporters, and a group of Liberals suspicious of regulation and state economic intervention emerges.
On the opposition side, the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative caucuses oppose the monopoly.
And let’s face it, despite all the National Post fretting about a “one party state” (that would be the eight-year federal Liberal government rather than the 30-year Alberta Conservative government that the Post supports), someday the government will change.
That day likely will mark the beginning of the end for the board, if it hasn’t withered away already.
