An Australian sugar marketer with experience in the North American grain industry is being proposed as the new president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Wheat Board, according to sources.
Ian White, currently chief executive officer of Queensland Sugar Ltd. that exports most Australian cane sugar, was picked from among three candidates by a CWB-government search committee and accepted by agriculture minister Gerry Ritz.
The minister is expected to take the recommendation for appointment to federal cabinet soon. It is unclear if White was the unanimous choice of the search committee.
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If approved by cabinet, which is considered a formality, White would replace interim CWB president and CEO Greg Arason, appointed after the government fired former CEO Adrian Measner in December 2006 over his pro-single desk defence.
Sources say the government would like to have White on the job in time for the Jan. 29 Ottawa meeting of CWB and barley industry players. Ritz called the meeting “to focus on finding ways to move toward marketing choice for barley growers.”
White has been a strong advocate of trade liberalization. He is chair of the Global Sugar Alliance that opposes protectionism, particularly in United States and European Union markets.
“He is a strong supporter of free trade and the liberalization of the sugar trade,” Canadian Sugar Institute president Sandra Marsden said from Toronto last week. She has worked with him in the sugar alliance.
“He is an energetic, effective leader in the fight for more open markets.”
What may raise the eyebrows of some CWB defenders is that White also was involved in negotiations that led to the end of the single desk for sugar exports in Queensland state in 2005. Advocates said the industry needed more pricing and marketing flexibility than the legislated single desk gave them.
Queensland Sugar Ltd. now exports most of the country’s sugar by negotiating contracts with all but two of the state’s sugar mills.
White once acted as CEO of a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool subsidiary, AgPro Grain Inc.
The company was formed in 1990 to manage grain terminal, seed cleaning and alfalfa dehydration assets purchased by Sask Pool from Elders Grain and Northern Sales. Ltd.
White, who had managed Canadian operations for the Australian-owned Elders Grain, was named AgPro’s first CEO and served for several years.
In the past, he also managed U.S. operations for Queensland Cotton and served as CEO of the Australian company Grainco Ltd.
Shortly after the new wheat board CEO takes the job, he is expected to be summoned before the House of Commons agriculture committee where MPs will grill him over his credentials, his views on single desk marketing and his role in ending the Queensland export sugar single desk.
Opposition MPs in particular will be interested in whether he made any promises or was given any orders by the government on the issue of dismantling the CWB’s barley single desk.
If approved by cabinet, White will join a CWB board that is deeply divided and almost evenly split between supporters and opponents of the barley export and malting barley monopoly. The board will establish his compensation level.
Measner was paid an annual salary of $286,000.
White will be steering the board through a hot world grain market and a hot political and legal debate about the future of the Winnipeg-based grain marketer.
