Promoting single desk marketing is no longer part of the formal job description for the Canadian Wheat Board’s president and chief executive officer.
Five years ago, when Adrian Measner was hired as chief executive officer of the Canadian Wheat Board, the job description read, in part:
“In conjunction with the board of directors, the CWB will demonstrate to prairie farmers the competitive advantages of single desk selling and pooling of wheat and barley.”
That sentence is absent from the job description being used in the search for a new CEO. In fact, it contains no reference to single desk selling. That’s not the only change.
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The old job description says the CEO will work with directors to show producers that the CWB is democratically controlled by and accountable to prairie farmers.
The new job description says the board is “primarily” accountable to farmers, as well as other stakeholders set out in the CWB Act.
Finally, the old description says the CEO and the directors together should “actively represent and advocate as necessary” for prairie farmers’ interests with governments and industry.
The new description limits the CEO’s role to working with industry, not government, and says the directors should “take the lead” in working with elected officials.
Measner, who was fired by CWB minister Chuck Strahl in December 2006 for publicly promoting the benefits of single desk selling, said the changes send a clear message.
“There is a conscious effort here to control the CEO and I suspect that effort is coming from Ottawa,” he said. “There is no question in my mind there is an attempt to put some constraints there and I suspect it was at least partly a result of my situation.”
The new job description was approved by a search committee made up of five CWB directors and two government officials.
Three of the five directors (Larry Hill, Allen Oberg and Ken Ritter) support the single desk, while two (Henry Vos and William Cheuk) do not. When the two government appointees are taken into account, only three of the seven members are single desk supporters.
Committee chair Ken Ritter, also chair of the CWB, downplayed the significance of the changes.
“It’s more a question of emphasis rather than fundamental change,” he said.
At the end of the day the CEO will be in charge of a single desk organization, and will have to run it to the satisfaction of the board of directors.
Ritter said the new job description reflects the view that the CEO should concentrate his or her efforts on the board’s business operations, and leave political and mandate-related issues to the elected directors.
That doesn’t mean the CEO is being gagged.
“The CEO is a director and directors are free to say whatever they want,” he said. “This is simply designed to be clear on the roles of the board of directors and the CEO as senior manager.”
He added that as long as the government has the authority under the CWB Act to hire and fire the CEO, the board has to live with that reality and act accordingly.
“But we’d certainly like to have that changed down the road to reflect complete farmer control of the organization.’
CWB director Bill Nicholson thinks the single desk reference should have remained part of the job description. The single desk is the organization’s biggest asset, he said, and promoting and protecting that asset should obviously be part of the CEO’s job.
“Those changes are there primarily at the insistence of the federal government,” he said, through its appointees to the search committee.
But he said the decision also recognizes the vulnerability of the CEO, as evidenced by Measner’s firing for following his job description.
“This is just a recognition of the reality that we’re in with this current government,” said Nicholson. “We don’t want to put the CEO in an untenable position.”
He added that when the board considers the candidates for the job, he will take their views on the single desk into account in his decision.
Vos said he supports the view that the CEO should focus on day-to-day operational issues and leave the public policy debate to directors.
The deadline for applications is July 9. The search committee will review prospective candidates July 17. The board of directors will eventually put forward a name or names to the minister, who makes the appointment. The board sets compensation.
