CALGARY – Alberta’s proposed test open market for wheat and barley will work only if the Canadian Wheat Board helps make it work, say Alberta government officials.
“The entire experiment is predicated on full co-operation from the Canadian Wheat Board,” says Nithi Govindasamy of Alberta Agriculture’s policy secretariat.
He told farmers attending the annual convention of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association that the board would have to agree not to “subvert” the operations of the test market in any way.
If that happens, he said, “there do not appear to be any insurmountable barriers to the proper functioning of a test open market.”
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But CWB co-operation may be hard to come by.
Wheat board chair Ken Ritter said in an interview he can’t see why the agency should assist in a project that could undermine the board’s ability to get maximum returns for prairie wheat and barley growers, especially given the recent CWB election, in which all three Alberta districts elected directors who support the single desk.
“It’s just totally unworkable,” Ritter said. “It doesn’t make any practical sense, it doesn’t make any economic sense, and in the face of farmer voting it doesn’t make any political sense.”
The Alberta legislature passed a bill in December authorizing the provincial agriculture minister to negotiate with the federal government and the board to bring in an open market in the province for a 10-year test period.
The proposal was a dominant subject at last week’s annual convention of the WCWGA, which shares the Alberta government’s opposition to single-desk selling and supports the test market proposal.
Alberta agriculture minister Shirley McClellan told the wheat growers the government is committed to the plan.
“We’re going to continue pressing this and we’re going to be aggressive,” she said to a round of applause.
McClellan pledged the issue would be resolved one way or another before the end of 2003.
She is trying to organize a meeting with CWB minister Ralph Goodale, federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief and Ritter to discuss the proposal.
Ritter said he’s not interested in such a meeting because it’s based on the false premise that the board is part of government. Instead, he has invited McClellan to Winnipeg to discuss grain marketing issues with CWB directors and senior managers, but McClellan said that likely won’t happen.
“I’ll probably pass because I’ve already had the wheat board indoctrination and it didn’t take,” she said.
Mark Hlady, the provincial MLA who introduced the test open market bill, told the wheat growers that Vanclief supports the proposal.
However, a spokesperson for Vanclief said that is incorrect and the federal government’s position is that the rules for marketing wheat and barley should be set by farmers through their elected CWB directors.
Govindasamy said many details remain to be worked out, including how a farmer would decide which market to sell to, the possible need to segregate board and non-board grain, and rules to limit the project to grain grown in Alberta.
