If federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale had only been born in a somewhat different time and form, he might have achieved stardom as one of the greatest fan-dancers ever.
Imagine the excitement building in the ministerial dance as the fans flit blurringly from one strategic location to another, revealing only an occasional tantalizing glimpse of an ankle.
Suddenly, the music reaches a crescendo as the dancer raises high the all-covering fan – only to reveal that the second fan has an instant before moved into place to keep the dancer’s modesty intact.
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Or, to look at it from the other perspective, perhaps only such legendary exotic dancers as Gypsy Rose Lee or Sally Rand could have competed with Goodale in revealing so little while announcing wheat board policy.
After interminable hearings, debates, rallies, demonstrations, lobbying and letter campaigns, a news release last Friday finally declared that Goodale “today announced changes to be made in the marketing system for western Canadian wheat and barley.”
The trouble is that precious few specific changes were actually announced. Even most that sounded specific had a qualifier like “will consider.”
Will barley be kept under the board? Well, yes, except there will almost certainly be a vote this winter in which producers could decide to remove barley from the board. (A news release said flatly there “will” be such a vote, but then the release was withdrawn for more semantic massaging.)
What about wheat? That’s definitely to remain under the board, unless, of course, some yet-to-be-defined procedure for electing directors for the board results in directors who decide to hold a plebiscite on whether the board should have a monopoly on marketing wheat.
After years of dissension and argument over these issues, many may well be understandably frustrated that there is still no clear policy decision.
But maybe it is just as well that the federal government continues to move deliberately.
By easing toward such reforms as a new governance structure for the board and more pooling and purchasing flexibility, the minister will be able to give farmers a better idea of what a reformed board would act like.
That in turn would help barley producers make a clear-cut choice on whether the board handles barley.
There will still be explosive issues to resolve, such as whether a checkoff is needed to build up funds for the board, but resolving the issues of board governance and barley marketing would go a long way toward making possible eventual political peace in the grainbelt.
Consensus is still a worthwhile goal.
