The Canadian Wheat Board, in the midst of getting the measure of a new federal agriculture minister who will try to end the CWB marketing monopoly, is also getting a new face in Ottawa.
In early September, Brigid Rivoire becomes the wheat board’s representative in the capital, responsible for representing the CWB on Parliament Hill.
She is a veteran of the Ottawa agricultural policy wars after serving for five years as the Canadian Federation of Agriculture executive director.
Her CFA years coincided with the development and often controversial implementation of the agricultural policy framework.
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Rivoire left the CFA a year ago to work for the Canadian Child Care Federation in Ottawa. Before the CFA, she worked in the communications branch of Agriculture Canada.
At the CWB, she replaces Victor Jarjour, an Agriculture Canada veteran who also served for years as agricultural counsellor in Canada’s Brussels-based mission to the European Union. He was considered a trade specialist for the board in Ottawa.
Rivoire’s job description likely will be broader, involving Parliament Hill appearances and behind-the-scenes lobbying to get the CWB message out to politicians and bureaucrats.
She returns to agricultural politics at a time when CWB relations with the minority Conservative government are strained. The Conservatives have tried to end the CWB barley monopoly and were thwarted only at the last moment by a court ruling July 31.
New federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said he will decide soon whether Ottawa should appeal that court ruling.
When Parliament resumes in September, both government and opposition MPs will be trying to win the support of the Bloc Québécois on the wheat board issue.
Prime minister Stephen Harper has said he will try to persuade the BQ to support the Conservatives in changing the legislation to end the monopoly.
The Conservative argument will be that the majority of barley farmers supported marketing choice in a referendum and the government therefore has the authority to act.
Harper will be hoping the referendum argument has some appeal to the separatist BQ that insists a win for the sovereignists in a Quebec referendum would give the province the authority to separate.
Opposition Liberals and New Democrats will be trying to win Bloc support for amendments to the CWB Act that would give the CWB board of directors, most of them elected by farmers, the final say on monopoly questions.
They will try to appeal to the BQ with the argument that if the Conservatives can change the CWB over the objections of many farmers, it also could undermine supply management monopolies that are at the heart of BQ agriculture policy.
