Canada’s grain industry regulations and regulator need to be brought into the 21st century, says a senior official with Canada’s largest grain company.
Murdoch Mackay, vice-president of operations for Agricore United, says an upcoming review of the Canadian Grain Commission and Canada Grain Act provides a long overdue opportunity to modernize regulations governing the grain industry.
“There have been changes in the industry and we need to understand that,” he told farmers attending an AU members meeting in Saskatoon.
The act was passed in 1906, said Mackay, and while it has been amended over time, it’s inadequate to deal with current realities in the grain industry, he said.
Read Also
Stacking Canada up on gene editing livestock
Canada may want to gauge how Argentina and other countries have approached gene editing in livestock and what that has meant for local innovation.
“There have been changes in the needs of producers, the needs of grain companies and the needs of end-use customers.”
Earlier this year the federal government passed legislation calling for a comprehensive and independent review of the commission and the act, to be completed by the end of July 2006.
In mid-November Agriculture Canada issued a formal request for proposals from companies interested in conducting the review, with a deadline of Dec. 20.
Tom Askin, who is managing the review on behalf of Agriculture Canada, said the election campaign will have no effect on the review.
“The review was initiated prior to the election and is proceeding,” he said.
The successful bidder will be selected in early January, with the review expected to get under way in February. In addition to consultations with industry stakeholders and written submissions, the review process will include eight public meetings, two in each prairie province and Ontario and one in Quebec.
Mackay said the review needs to address a long list of crucial issues, including consistent and reliable grain quality control, liability, lower administration costs, licensing and security, a new governance system based on a corporate model, dispute resolution, increased flexibility, better ways to handle identity preserved products, research and adequate funding for the commission.
Some producer groups have complained that in recent years the commission has been more interested in looking after grain companies rather than producers.
The National Farmers Union has been particularly vocal, saying the commission’s priority should be to protect farmers’ interests.
Mackay disagreed, saying the commission’s mandate shouldn’t be to favour grain companies or producers, but to provide a vehicle for resolving disagreements. It needs to be an “impartial arbiter” and develop a dispute resolution system that everybody feels comfortable with and makes decisions based on sound business principles, he added.
“The grain commission has a lot of customers out there – farmers, grain handlers, the Canadian Wheat Board, end-use customers – and everybody has something at stake,” Mackay said.
“If you make decisions that are primarily for the benefit of producers, you have to ask what impact that has on the rest of the system.”
The review also needs to address the issue of who is liable if a shipment of export grain fails to meet the guarantees laid out in the certificate final issued by the CGC, he said.
That doesn’t happen often, but there have been occasions when a ship has left port several days before CGC tests revealed the presence of unregistered varieties in the cargo, leaving the grain company on the hook with the customer.
“We’re responsible and we pay for it, but the CGC is the one that issues the certificate final.”
