To the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, it’s a wasteful exercise in electioneering propaganda.
To the Canadian Wheat Board, it is simply a matter of asking farmers what they want their marketing agency to do.
The object of those opposing opinions is a survey of farmers being conducted by a Winnipeg polling firm on behalf of the CWB.
The wheat growers recently lashed out at the board for what association president Ted Menzies called its lavish spending on polling and propaganda.
“This is just another needless deduction from our grain cheques,” he said in a Dec. 20 press release.
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A wheat board official said the survey, conducted by Winnipeg-based Western Opinion Research, cost about $50,000.
Menzies said the telephone survey “probes into the personal lives of farmers,” asking more than 100 detailed questions about subjects ranging from grain marketing to membership in farm organizations to whether farmers think the board represents their interests.
“These are questions you would expect to be asked by a political party, not a professional marketing organization,” said Menzies, describing the survey as part of an all-out effort to prop up sagging support for the board’s monopoly status.
CWB spokesperson Justin Kohlman said he can’t understand why anyone would object to the agency asking farmers for their opinions on subjects relating to grain marketing and board operations and activities.
“It’s part of our normal business practice,” he said in an interview. “We do them on a regular basis to find out what type of issues are most important to farmers, what they want from us and if there are areas they think we could improve on.”
The survey isn’t designed to boost support for the board, he said. If the board can find out what farmers want it to do and then respond to those wishes, that might result in increased support for the agency, he said.
But he’s at a loss as to why anyone would consider that a negative thing.
“Most farmers tell us they want us to listen and then take action on what they want, and the only way we have of knowing what they want is by asking,” said Kohlman.
Menzies said the board should release the results of the survey publicly, but Kohlman said that’s unlikely to happen. He said participants might answer questions differently if they knew their answers would be made public, adding that it’s common practice for large corporations to do confidential surveys of customers for internal planning and strategic purposes.
