Improved prices | No downside seen in transition
Prairie grain farmers opposed to the Canadian Wheat Board single desk were in Ottawa last week to party like it was 1942, before the CWB monopoly took effect.
At a national grain symposium and before the House of Commons agriculture committee, they said transition from the Aug. 1 end of the single desk has gone as well as could be hoped.
Prices are at record levels, deliveries for the first quarter of the crop year are well above normal and even rail service seems to have improved.
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“This change in the industry … is one of those events that most of us in our careers will only see once,” Cargill Canada president Len Penner told a grain symposium organized by Grain Growers of Canada and Canada Grains Council Nov. 21.
Cherilyn Nagel from Mossbank, Sask., a former president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association and a long-time opponent of the monopoly, said many of the critics’ predictions did not happen.
There was not a flood of grain across the U. S. border, the border did not close and the delivery and transportation systems have been working well.
“Overall, transition to the open market has gone well, from where I sit,” she said.
Ian White, president of CWB, concurred.
“It has been extremely smooth,” he said. “Some farmers are still confused about the new system but generally, I think they are getting used to it.”
No farmers who fought the end of the CWB single desk were invited to speak or made any argument from the audience.
White said in an interview that high commodity prices unrelated to the end of the monopoly undoubtedly helped smooth the transition.
“If there had been low prices, I can’t say what would have happened and that story is yet to be told (when prices inevitably decline in future).”
He said the board will continue to work “to find its place in the industry.”
That includes working on its proposals about how to privatize the board, which have to be presented to the agriculture minister within four years.
He said it is a priority and “we don’t want to leave it to the last minute,” suggesting a proposal could be ready well before the deadline and perhaps within two years. He predicted it will be “somewhere between” a recommendation that the board evolve into a co-operative or be sold to another company.
White, an Australian hired in 2008 by to lead the CWB after the Conservative government fired the previous chief executive officer for resisting plans to end the monopoly, said he would like to stay on “to see the job done.”
That would mean having a third appointment from the government in 2014 when his current three-year term expires.
“I want to stay until I am sure the CWB is on the right footing,” he said.
White said he has his Canadian residency papers.
“I might even apply for citizenship.”
Meanwhile, Alberta barley producer Brian Otto, chair of the Barley Council of Canada Working Group and an opponent of the CWB single desk, told Commons agriculture committee MPs Nov. 20 the end of the monopoly has put more money into farmers’ pockets, has converted some CWB supporters into open market supporters and even seems to have coincided with better rail service.
“We have moved more grain this year than we have in the past 10 years,” he said.
