THE FARMERS have spoken and it was their choice to make.
At the conclusion of the Canadian Wheat Board director elections, four of the five districts involved had elected directors who support the board’s continued monopoly on sales of wheat and export barley.
It’s a message that the majority of farmers see value in the board’s marketing methods.
When the campaign began, all 19 candidates agreed that the marketing issue – that is, whether the board should retain its monopoly or whether an open market should prevail – was really the only matter to be decided.
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What followed was one of the most active director election campaigns yet seen.
The results speak for themselves.
They should also speak to the Conservative government, which has waged a campaign to eliminate the board’s sales monopoly through means legal, questionable and illegal, the latter having been determined in several court challenges.
It’s time for the Conservative government to turn its attention to the more pressing agricultural matters at hand.
Over the past several years, the government has been relentless in its efforts to eliminate the board’s monopoly.
It claimed a majority of farmers wanted marketing choice, and further claimed that Conservative votes in the last federal election were a tacit endorsement of intentions to change wheat board operations.
Results of the recent wheat board director elections contradict these assertions.
With the highest voting percentage ever, albeit a mere 52.8 percent of eligible voters, single deskers garnered 56.6 percent of votes cast on the first ballot.
By comparison, marketing choice supporters earned 42.8 percent.
For the third consecutive director election, support grew for open market candidates in terms of first-ballot votes.
That shows the issue is significant and it isn’t going away, but nor is the majority ready yet for change.
Grain Growers of Canada, a farm group that supports marketing choice, said the election results indicate pro-choice advocates must work harder to explain to growers how marketing choice would work and how the CWB could operate within such a system.
The group is absolutely right.
A key deficiency with the marketing choice lobby, and with the Conservative government’s related efforts, has been a failure to clearly explain how the wheat board could sustainably operate in an open marketing system.
The Conservative government has been fighting for its life of late, under threat from a Liberal-NDP coalition, with support from the Bloc Quebecois, and now the possibility of further attacks orchestrated by new Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.
The prime minister has decried the formation of a coalition, suggesting that the Conservatives won power through a legitimate democratic election and the results should be respected.
That same principle applies to the CWB director’s elections, duly held and with the results clearly indicated.
By its own arguments, then, the Conservatives must accept the results of the wheat board election and start dealing with issues of greater concern to Canadian farmers.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
