Canadian Wheat Board directors are split along ideological lines and are no longer able to function in the best interests of farmers, say a pair of CWB directors who resigned last week.
Henry Vos, an Alberta farmer who was elected to the board on a campaign to help implement grain marketing changes, submitted his resignation Oct 26.
Jeff Nielsen, another Alberta farmer-elected director who supports marketing change, resigned Oct. 31.
Vos went public with his resignation just hours before the wheat board announced it was launching a lawsuit to challenge the legality of federal legislation to eliminate Western Canada’s single desk marketing system.
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In a letter distributed to farmer constituents and the media, Vos suggested that efforts by pro-board directors to protect single desk marketing at all costs have resulted in a polarized board where dissenting voices feel intimidated and bullied.
He also suggested that the board’s resistance to proposed legislative changes is contributing to an environment of uncertainty and confusion that is affecting farmers, customers and the industry.
“The CWB’s decision this week to launch a lawsuit against the federal government … when it is clear to everyone that it will not change the outcome … is simply wrong,” Vos said.
“To continue to work within the existing dysfunctional CWB board would be a disservice to those who voted for me as their director.”
In an interview, Vos said the ongoing dispute over eliminating the CWB’s grain marketing monopoly is coming at a huge cost to farmers.
One day before his resignation, Vos attended an Oct. 25 board meeting in Winnipeg where directors met with legal counsel to discuss the merits and costs of launching an action against the federal government.
Citing board confidentiality, Vos refused to say how much the lawsuit was likely to cost western Canadian farmers, but he acknowledged that those legal costs would come out of pool accounts.
“I said earlier that I believed a decision (to launch a lawsuit) was going to be very costly to the farmers of Western Canada, not only in the direct costs for lawyers and court actions … but the bigger costs will be in the uncertainty and the lack of clarity around the (grain industry),” he said.
“This will create more uncertainty for our farmers, more uncertainty for our customers and for the people handling our grain. At this point, the organization has become a political opposition party and if I’d wanted to be part of a political opposition party, I’d have bought a membership.”
The wheat board’s uncertain future is making headlines around the world.
Earlier this week, at a CWB news conference announcing plans to launch a lawsuit, board chair Allen Oberg answered questions from domestic and international media outlets, including theWall Street JournalandLa France Agricole,a leading agricultural publication in France.
Weeks earlier, an article on the future of the board appeared inThe Economist,an international news magazine with staff around the world and a global circulation of 1.4 million readers.
The legal and political quagmire surrounding the industry was further compounded last week when the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association announced it would launch its own lawsuit against the CWB.
Grain industry stakeholders, particularly private grain handling companies, have repeatedly stated that the industry needs certainty and firm transition dates to ensure that the flow of grain is not interrupted and that Canada’s foreign reputation as a supplier of top quality wheat and malting barley is not jeopardized.
When asked if the CWB lawsuit was likely to compound uncertainty already surrounding the industry, Oberg said any uncertainty that exists was created by the Harper government, which ignored provisions
in the CWB Act and is attempting to fast-track an undemocratic political agenda despite the wishes of Canadian farmers.
“The uncertainty that’s being created is entirely by the federal government’s extremely tight time lines to make changes of this magnitude by Aug. 1 of 2012,” said Oberg.
Vos also criticized the board for attempts to muzzle pro-change directors, citing a decision earlier this year to suspend District 2 director Nielsen after Nielsen expressed concerns over a series of producer information meetings held across the Prairies in August.
Nielsen publicly criticized the information meetings, suggesting their primary purpose was to promote the retention of single desk marketing rather than inform producers about the new grain marketing environment that Ottawa seems intent on introducing.
He likened his suspension to a CWB-imposed gag order, adding that he now feels reluctant to voice his own opinions if they differ from those of pro-monopoly directors.
Oberg, however, said directors have never been discouraged from making their views known.
The suspension was deemed necessary because the CWB’s internal governance committee felt Nielsen’s actions contravened established codes of conduct, he added.
“They (pro-change directors) have every opportunity at the board table to raise their concerns …. There’s been no attempt to cut off debate or discussion,” Oberg said.
“In any board of directors, there’s going to be different points of view. My concern as chair is that those points of view take place at the board table and at committee. … When those debates move out into the public realm, to me that’s a concern.”
According to Nielsen, the fact that pro-desk directors openly lobbied for retention of the single-desk at August information meetings is proof that some directors’ can make their views known in public while others cannot without fear of suspension.
Vos also said CWB directors debated a motion last month that would have allowed a simple majority of directors – eight of 15 – to permanently remove other directors from the board for perceived code of conduct violations.
The motion wasn’t passed, but Vos described it as an offensive and deliberate attempt to intimidate dissenting voices.
“I understand his (Vos’s) reasoning fully,” said Nielsen.
“Unfortunately, I think we’ve really polarized the farming community. You have the hard left … that support the wheat board and you have the hard right … that really don’t want the monopoly but you also have a very large centre and it’s that centre group that has always wanted to run their businesses to the best of their abilities.”
