The federal government’s barley marketing plebiscite seemed at times to be less about how to market barley than about how to to run a plebiscite.
|
_____ Correction _____
A story on page 5 of the March 15 issue should have read that the delay in sending out plebiscite ballots for the farmer vote on barley marketing was caused by a last minute federal government decision to change material included in the voting package. Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changesfederal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million |
Some of the most heated debate during the six-week campaign, which ended March 13, centred on the issues surrounding the voting process, not the future of the single desk marketing system.
Some single desk supporters went so far as to claim that the myriad of issues surrounding the vote were serious enough to bring the outcome into question.
“I’m very concerned about the integrity of the process,” said Bill Dobson, president of Wild Rose Agricultural Producers.
Neither federal agriculture minister Chuck Strahl nor his communications director were available for an interview.
However, Brian Otto, a leader of the Market Choice Alliance, which supports the government plan to end the single desk, said that while there may have been a few problems, it’s not as bad as some critics say.
“There’s always a better way to do something, but the process was what it was and I’ve just accepted it as that,” he said.
The deadline for ballots to be returned was March 13. The results are expected to be announced during the week of March 26.
The plebiscite got off to an inauspicious start when federal officials were forced to delay the mailing for a week due to a printing error on the ballot.
Things didn’t get much better over the next few weeks as critics compiled a long list of complaints about the voting process, including the three-option question, the lack of a voters list, the numbered ballot form, some farmers getting no ballot and others receiving two or three, no spending limits, the continuation of the gag order on the Canadian Wheat Board while federal politicians campaigned for an open market at taxpayers’ expense, the lack of farmer scrutineers and the government’s failure to describe the conditions for victory.
Farm groups and politicians that support the single desk say all that adds up to a fatally flawed plebiscite that will produce a meaningless result.
“This whole exercise was a deliberate attempt to manipulate the process in a dishonest fashion,” said Manitoba farmer Larry Bohdanovich of Real Voice for Choice. “It’s all contrived to get a certain result.”
Richard Gray, an agricultural economist at the University of Saskatchewan, said the controversy about the voting process, combined with a confusing three-option question, will make it difficult to reach any solid conclusions after the votes are counted.
“I just don’t think it will get us very far down the road of knowing what farmers think,” he said. “Things will be just as muddied when this is all over as they are now.”
Those who support the government’s plans to move to an open market don’t share those concerns.
Otto described the plebiscite as a positive experience for prairie farmers. While he has heard the criticism, he doesn’t think it will undermine the credibility of the outcome.
“Farmers that I talked to from both sides definitely knew what they were voting for,” he said.
Otto thinks the correct way to interpret the result will be to add the votes for Options 2 and 3 as the open market vote and weigh that against Option 1, the single desk choice. And he’s confident that will result in a victory for the open market side.
However, single desk supporters say Option 2 offered farmers the false choice of a strong wheat board in an open market. They say it’s impossible to know what farmers who voted for Option 2 thought they were voting for.
Dobson said it was disturbing that government MPs and CWB minister Chuck Strahl spent taxpayers’ money to promote the open market option, while the CWB was prohibited from telling its side of the story by the federally imposed gag order.
“It was definitely not a level playing field,” he said.
Gray agreed, saying that while CWB officials who know more about selling barley than anyone were muzzled, “self-proclaimed experts” in the government had free rein to express their views.
“Taking the wheat board out of the loop certainly reduced the information available to producers, and in any public policy discussion, the best process is to get as much information out there as possible,” he said.
Otto took a different view, saying the government has made it clear since taking office that it favours an open market and the minister has every right to promote that in public.
He added that CWB directors who favour the single desk have been free to express their views as well.
CWB director Ian McCreary said the government should have stayed out of the campaign and left it up to farmers to make their case for or against the single desk.
But what bothers him most about the whole issue is that it has reopened a divisive debate that had quietened down considerably in recent years.
“The main legacy of all this will be to pit farmer against farmer again along the lines of 10 years ago.”
