In June 1935, the federal government introduced a bill to establish the Canadian Wheat Board. The first version of the bill (later amended) would have made it compulsory for farmers to market grain via the CWB.
Various opponents attacked the idea of compulsion, prompting a June 20 Western Producer editorial that is still well worth considering:
“… We have lived under a practically ironclad compulsory marketing system.
“For all practical purposes every single bushel of our grain has been sold through one body, the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, and the price of the little that did not actually go through that organization was set by it.
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“The farmer may have thought at times that he had a choice but the only choice that remained with him was the choice of which elevator company or brokerage firm would transact his business. He delivered his grain and it was sold through the Exchange at the price set by the Exchange.
“It may be contended that one real choice was left to him – the time to sell. That is true; he could name the day. But if the vast majority of Western farmers would answer truthfully, and of course that is the only answer they would give, they would admit that even when they were free to hold their grain and name the time of selling they usually guessed wrongly.
“What new form of compulsion does the proposed Wheat Board introduce? None whatever.
“It merely substitutes a government-controlled agency for the Winnipeg Grain Exchange and at the same time wipes out a host of brokerage firms with their expensive entourages – all of whose expenses incidentally were collected out of the farmer’s wheat, no matter what he got, and before he got anything.
“This bugbear of compulsion which the opponents of a Wheat Board are waving is purely artificial, their talk the most watery kind of eyewash.
“The Wheat Board does not introduce one particle of ‘compulsion’ that did not exist before. …
“No individual who is not economically independent can ever be really free. Hence it follows that the system of wheat marketing which will result in the greatest freedom for the farmer is the system that will secure for him the best legitimate price for his wheat. …
“The idea that the ability to choose between a swarm of brokers which is the one who will get the commission out of his grain for selling it at the going price on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange – the notion that that is liberty, a pearl above price to be held on to at all costs – well, we would say mildly that this is a peculiar idea and is not at all our idea.”
