Across the southern prairies, demonstrations by some farmers against the export monopoly held by the Canadian Wheat Board have become a common sight in the past three years.
The protesters are sometimes depicted, and often see themselves, as persecuted freedom fighters battling big government.
Their critics describe them as greedy individualists willing to harm their neighbors for their own profit.
Either way, their cause continues to make headlines.
In this special report, Brandon-based correspondent Tracy Tjaden examines motives behind the movement and the motivation of some of its players.
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A jail cell wasn’t where Clayton Desrochers imagined he would spend his 24th birthday
“We were out there to prove a point and figured it could never come to this,” said the Baldur, Man., truck driver sentenced to two months in the Brandon Correctional Institute for hauling 1,000 bushels of barley to the United States without a Canadian Wheat Board export permit.
“Now, here I am.”
Desrochers, who faces more charges related to border running, spent his Jan. 11 birthday in unhappy confinement, surrounded, in his words, by drug offenders and biker gang members .
“Jail isn’t the life for somebody who’s been born and raised on a farm,” he said during a jail house interview.
While Desrochers’ story is extreme, some Canadian pollsters say support for anti-wheat board lobby groups like Canadian Farmers for Justice and the Canadian Farm Enterprise Network is growing.
Demands for an end to the board monopoly over wheat and barley exports are a sign of the times, said Olev Wain, a public opinion researcher with The Dunvegan Group in Calgary.
Farmers today understand their marketing options. “It’s not a small group of farmers here, and I don’t think they’re going to go away … .”
There are no recent polling numbers on how much support the anti-board lobby can claim, but Wain said it’s not a fringe.
“I think there’s a great deal of support for the free market attitude,” he said. “Alberta farmers in particular have that entrepreneurial spirit. We see that in virtually every study we do on free trade or marketing grain.”
Colin Carter, a former University of Manitoba agriculture economist now with the University of California, said the number of farmers seriously questioning how the board sells their grain has risen dramatically in recent years.
“It’s not a small issue. That’s why it hasn’t died down.”
Other factions stress that the majority of farmers still support the board.
Some of them concede the campaign hasn’t waned but they insist it’s a small, noisy group of farmers skilled at attracting media attention.
Mervin Lloyd, a farmer from Darcy, Sask., organized meetings in support of the wheat board before a plesbiscite last February to determine whether farmers wanted to retain barley marketing under the wheat board. He said the board is the only big grain industry player on the side of farmers.
“I can’t bring myself to understand those who think they can do a better job,” he said. “Most of us farming don’t have time to devote the time it would take to become anywhere near knowledgeable.”
Lloyd said when farmers talk at the curling rink or on coffee row, the majority support the board and wish the debate would just go away.
“Producers are getting tired of getting called upon to defend the board because the people on this side of it prefer to be silent,” he said. “We don’t want to be out there doing protests and making all this noise. We shouldn’t have to. We are the majority and we know that.”
According to Gary Bennewies, senior vice-president of pollster Angus Reid’s agri-food division, the proportion of commercial producers supporting the civil disobedience tactics of Canadian Farmers for Justice is small.
The majority of producers want change, he said, but not destruction of the board.
“We are seeing young farmers who are more progressive, want to see change and they’re more comfortable handling the marketing side of things,” Bennewies said.
And the trend isn’t limited to agriculture.
Deregulation is happening across society, said Harvey Brooks, a University of Alberta agriculture professor and former corporate policy director for the CWB.
Attacks on the Red Cross and the Canadian military are examples of the backlash against traditional Canadian institutions, he said. “They’re having to rationalize and justify their existence, and the Canadian Wheat Board is no exception.”
Most institutions have been slow to respond and the longer it takes, the harder it is to deal with opposition, he said.
Meanwhile, the critics are getting impatient, said Ken Stickland, an agricultural consultant with Kenagra Management Services in Edmonton.
Young farmers learning more about grain marketing are frustrated that the board won’t back away from its traditional role, he said.
They’re tired of studies and public meetings and “want to take a hand grenade and blow the whole system up.”
Conrad Johnson, who farms near Bracken, Sask., said anti-board activists share one critical trait.
“If you look, we’re young and old, successful and not so successful but the one thing that’s really come out is the bulldog determination that we’ve all been lied to, kicked and cheated long enough that we’ve drawn a line in the sand and said ‘no more’ .”
For Johnson, the issue is the thousands of dollars he claims the board costs him every year.
But Bernie Sambrook of Medora, Man., said the push to end the monopoly is about more than the bottom line.
“It’s no longer a question of making more money,” said the CFEN supporter.
“The more I find out about this travesty and the fact my rights are being trampled on by the federal government, the more I’m spurred on.”
These producers reject the claim that anti-board monopoly campaigners are greedy and selfish.
“If I said to you I support a free and open banking system in this country, or an open market to sell farm equipment, you probably wouldn’t view me as some wild-eyed radical,” said Sambrook.
And he said anti-board activists are not hostile to co-operatives. He is a member of his local retail co-op but it is not a monopoly. “I can go to the Esso across the street to buy fuel and they’re not going to throw me in jail.”
Meantime, Desrochers is out of jail on bail after serving a week of his sentence. He figures that to play his part in the fight against the board, he is better off outside the four walls of a jail cell.
