Canadian Wheat Board permit holders have spoken, albeit with a whisper compared to the relative roar of previous directors’ elections.
Voting for Districts 4, 6, 8 and 10 closed Dec. 3.
Results won’t be announced until Dec. 12, but one outcome is already clear – fewer farmers participated in the election compared to previous years.
As of the last day of voting, 28.7 percent of eligible ballots had been returned to election co-ordinator Meyers Norris Penny.
Some of the ballots are still in the mail but the preliminary tally doesn’t compare favourably with previous campaigns.
Read Also
Ag in Motion innovation awards showcase top 2025 ag technology
The 2025 Ag in Motion Innovation Awards celebrated winners across five categories: agronomics, agtech, business solutions, environmental sustainability and equipment.
In 2002, an election for odd-numbered districts, 38.2 percent of eligible farmers had made their choice known by this point in the proceedings.
Two years before that, 40.4 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots by the last day of the campaign for even-numbered districts.
“I expect at the end of the day we’ll (have a) five to 10 percent lower response rate than in the previous two elections,” said election co-ordinator Peter Eckersley.
He expects a final turnout figure of around 33 percent, which means only one-third of the grain farmers who were entitled to vote will have exercised that right.
By contrast, this year’s federal election brought out 61 percent or nearly two-thirds of the electorate. But that is a poor analogy, said University of Saskatchewan political studies professor Joe Garcea.
“The party system has a major effect on mobilization,” he said.
Looking at municipal elections, which typically marshal 20-25 percent of the voting public, is a more appropriate comparison, Garcea said.
By that standard the CWB elections are doing a good job of stirring the electoral pot.
But with voter turnout expected to fall 10 percentage points below the average of the past three CWB campaigns, Garcea suspects the wheat board may not be the hot button topic it once was.
“It tells me that people have come to accept the status quo and don’t see elections as a means of changing anything.”
David Rolfe, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, thinks the lacklustre response can be blamed on the dismal farm financial outlook and the delayed harvest.
“I suspect the paper pile in the farm offices has grown quite considerably over the last couple of months.”
Instead of devoting time to shrink that pile, farmers have spent October and November doing what they would normally do in August and September, fretting about crops, weather and finances.
“More than likely that’s what happened. (The CWB election) has just got shuffled off to the one side. It’s not urgent. It doesn’t rank up there in importance with your own problems on the farm, so it gets ignored.”
Rolfe also sensed a lack of enthusiasm for the 2004 campaign as evidenced by pathetic voter turnout at seven of the eight candidates’ debates.
“The political interest doesn’t seem to be there. That’s what drives debate. That’s what drives people to go to meetings and fill the form in. It just doesn’t seem to have been there this time.”
Eckersley can’t understand why the majority of permit holders have a blasé attitude on such a pertinent issue.
“I’m very surprised that there’s not more interest in being part of the decision-making process to elect the directors,” he said.
