Barring a last minute snag, the federal government will announce this week that Canadian Wheat Board president and chief executive officer Adrian Measner is being replaced.
No decision had been announced at press time and timing of the announcement was uncertain but a government source said Dec. 18 it would happen before Christmas and perhaps as early as Dec. 19.
“Indications are it is the government’s intention to replace Mr. Measner,” said the source.
The Canadian Wheat Board Act specifies that the minister should appoint a CEO based on a recommendation from the board of directors and the board then sets the compensation package for the position. It is unclear how agriculture minister Chuck Strahl will be able to name a replacement who presumably supports the government view that the board should move from monopoly to an open market player.
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“The act is not silent on the issue of how a CEO is chosen so I don’t see how the government could get around that,” Ralph Goodale, Liberal MP and CWB minister when the act was last amended in 1998, said in an interview.
“The board also gets to set the compensation package and if they felt the minister was ignoring the advice of the board of directors, they presumably could set a compensation package of a dollar a year.”
There is speculation Strahl could try to get around that by naming an interim CEO.
The majority of the board of directors has said it supports Measner and opposes the minister’s Nov. 29 letter to the CEO indicating that his appointment was under review and he had until Dec. 14 to respond.
Measner’s letter, sent at the end of the deadline day Dec. 14, said he would continue to obey the directives of the farmer-elected directors to work within a single desk system rather than follow the government directive to move to an open market system.
Meanwhile, Strahl laid the groundwork for his decision in a Dec. 15 interview by arguing that the Canadian Wheat Board and its supporters have overplayed their hand and damaged the board in their fight against government plans to end the monopoly.
In the interview, Strahl would not talk about his pending decision on Measner but he was highly critical of the public relations and political “zoo” created by the board and its supporters. He cited Measner’s Parliament Hill appearance with Liberal leader Stéphane Dion as part of it.
Strahl was particularly critical of the board decision to publish letters from international grain buyers indicating that their faith in the board as a reliable supplier has been shaken by the political controversy.
“I just thought that was unconscionable,” the minister said. He added that it appeared obvious the letters had been solicited.
“No corporation in the world would do that. Nobody in the world would say we have buyers out there who no longer want to do business with us so we’d like to broadcast it to encourage others not to do business with us.”
Board officials who made the decision to publish and post the letters from buyers in Mexico, Japan, China and elsewhere said they did it to show the damage that Strahl and the Conservatives are doing by trying to force change on the board.
Strahl said that is a suicide message from a commercial seller.
“The part that’s most disturbing for the minister responsible for the wheat board is that some of the actions taken by people who say they support the board have seriously hurt the board and I did not foresee that.”
He said his message to buyers is that the wheat board will continue to exist whatever happens in the monopoly debate and Canada will continue to produce good quality grain in good supply. “Come and buy.”
He said once the new board is sworn in at the end of the year, he will meet with it to try to help develop a better working relationship and to get the message out that Canada will remain in the grain selling business. “My job is to help reverse the damage done by that.”
He said he is not surprised by the passionate debate on the issue.
But he claimed surprise at the level and personal nature of some attacks. Critics have accused of him of using “Stalinist tactics,” of being a schoolyard bully and of being undemocratic and un-Canadian.
“I think that being called those things for raising the issue is a bit over the top,” said Strahl. “Anyone can champion a cause without calling the minister in charge Stalinistic.”
