When agriculture minister Chuck Strahl announced an early 2007 plebiscite on whether to end the Canadian Wheat Board marketing monopoly, he invited the House of Commons agriculture committee and others to recommend an appropriate question.
He recently got his wish.
On a motion from Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter, the opposition majority on the committee recommended option questions on both wheat and barley.
The non-binding motion to be tabled in the Commons says farmers should be asked to choose between two questions on wheat and barley:
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“a) I wish to maintain the ability to market all wheat (barley), with the continuing exception of feed wheat (barley) sold domestically, through the CWB single desk system;” or
b) I wish to remove the single desk marketing system from the CWB and sell all wheat (barley) through an open market system.”
The motion also says the voters list should be the one laid out in the
Canadian Wheat Board Act, which includes all 2005-06 CWB permit book holders.
Conservative MPs on the committee argued that Easter’s motion was out of order. Chair Gerry Ritz agreed and ruled it could not be tabled but the opposition majority voted to overrule the chair.
Easter said later the Conservative resistance could signal a strategy.
“It could be the minister is planning a manipulative question to deceive farmers of the government’s true intentions on the future of the board.”
