A decision by the Ontario Wheat Producers’ Marketing Board to offer
farmers a complete open market option starting next year should
convince westerners and the government that the Canadian Wheat Board
monopoly can be broken without destroying the board, say critics of the
monopoly.
They say Ontario’s example should be a beacon for the Prairies.
“We don’t have to live in fear that we will lose everything about the
board if we lose the monopoly,” said Canadian Alliance wheat board
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critic David Anderson of Saskatchewan. “I think the example of the last
two years of a dual market in Ontario proves that.”
Art Enns, president of the anti-monopoly Western Canadian Wheat Growers
Association, agrees.
“I think the success of the dual market in Ontario can indirectly
influence debate here and the (CWB) elections this fall,” he said Aug.
30. “All we have asked for is the same options for western wheat
farmers that they have in Ontario.”
But CWB chair and Saskatchewan farmer Ken Ritter begs to differ.
There is no way to compare an Ontario wheat board that sells most of
the crop domestically or to millers in the United States close to the
Ontario border while basing its price on American commodity exchanges,
with the Canadian Wheat Board that sells to 70 countries and deals with
far more complicated pricing issues, he said.
“I’m sure the critics will try to use Ontario to make their point but I
contend there is no comparison and no lesson to be learned,” Ritter
said.
At its Aug. 28 annual meeting in Stratford, Ont., the Ontario board
unveiled a new corporate plan that will radically change the way it
works. From the 1970s until it began to allow some open market sales in
the late 1990s, the Ontario board operated a single desk system.
They still will have to receive a permit from the board but beginning
next year, farmers will have the right to sell all their crop outside
the board. The wheat board will continue to operate pools but it will
act only as another competitive buyer in the market.
It is asking the federal government to change the current system of an
initial price guarantee to a loan guarantee. It is proposing a change
in its farmer delegate system to give more weight to areas that produce
more wheat.
And it is proposing that the Ontario wheat board issue export licences,
rather than requiring the
licences from the CWB.
That would require a change in the CWB Act and Anderson said it would
be a chance for MPs to debate the CWB monopoly once again.
“This has federal implications as well and I don’t think the government
can avoid this debate,” he said.
