WINNIPEG (Staff) – The prairie pools’ crushing company wants an end to transportation subsidies and doesn’t want the Canadian Wheat Board involved in marketing canola.
Murray Davis, senior vice-president for trading and marketing with CanAmera Foods Ltd., delivered that message to the annual meeting of Manitoba Pool Elevators last week.
It’s a message which runs counter to some of the pools’ longstanding policy positions and that didn’t sit too well with several delegates who cornered Davis after his speech to talk about it.
They’re happy with the positive (and confidential) financial results turned in last year by CanAmera, jointly owned by MPE, Saskatch-ewan Wheat Pool and Central Soya Canada.
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But long-time pool members like director Butch Harder, of Lowe Farm, weren’t as enthusiastic about some of the policy positions espoused by Davis.
“It’s fine to go into these kind of partnerships but I always went into them with the notion that we were still somehow in control,” said Harder. “I get a little disturbed when people from some of our partners start getting into these policy involvements.”
Davis told delegates that the Western Grain Transportation Act subsidy on raw grains and oilseeds shipped for export is the biggest impediment to a huge expansion in the prairie crushing industry.
“We would be much better off if we spun canola out of the WGTA and put in on a purely commercial basis,” he said.
CanAmera and other companies are poised to invest heavily in expansion, he said, predicting that crushing capacity could quickly jump from 2.4 to 4.5 million tonnes. But it won’t happen under the current rate structure, which he said subsidizes the export of crushing jobs to foreign countries.
“We prefer to be an open market, commercial operation,” Davis said speaking to reporters after his presentation to delegates. “I firmly believe that bodies that insert themselves between buyers and sellers in an open market just distort reality, they cost money and they get bigger.”
He said he didn’t like suggestions that the board should get involved in marketing canola, predicting it would frighten investors.
But Harder said farmers are concerned about their bottom line and many canola growers think it would be better if the board marketed their crop: “What he’s really saying is, he wants to get our canola cheaper.”
