Gerry Ritz appointments | Three members of the CWB board were also reappointed
Federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, faced with the need to make significant appointments to organizations under his political control, has chosen to stick with the familiar.
In appointments this week to Farm Credit Canada, the Canadian Grain Commission and the CWB, Ritz stayed loyal to those he knows.
Greg Stewart was re-appointed president of FCC until the middle of 2014 after more than five years on the job. Ritz said Stewart has presided over record FCC earnings and a sharp spike in the value of the FCC loan portfolio.
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However, the 18-month appointment instead of a longer term indicates that there will be a changing of the guard at the top of FCC in 2014.
At the grain commission, Ritz announced the three-year re-appointment of former Saskatchewan Reform MP Elwin Hermanson as CGC chief commissioner.
It means that Hermanson will preside over implementation of Canadian Grain Act amendments that are expected in Parliament this winter and will change CGC powers and functions.
The amendments will increase farmer cost-recovery fees to make the CGC more self-sufficient.
Hermanson was first appointed by Ritz in 2008. Hermanson was his MP in the 1990s when Ritz worked in his constituency office.
The agriculture minister also announced Oct.10 that he is re-appointing three members of the CWB board of directors — chair Bruce Johnson, Alberta producer Ken Motiuk and former Manitoba Conservative agriculture minister Glen Findlay.
When the government eliminated the CWB single desk last summer, it also ended the provision that the board be majority-controlled by farmer-elected directors.
Ritz now controls the board and appoints directors who support the end of the CWB monopoly.
“In this new era of marketing freedom, farmers will continue to count on these individuals for their forward-looking leadership and commitment to growing a prosperous future for western Canadian farmers,” Ritz said in the announcement of the director re-appointments.
Farmers who support the CWB single desk and who are determined to take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada beg to differ about the free-market view of Ritz and his supportive appointees.
An application to have the issue reviewed by the Supreme Court is expected to be heard this winter after a Federal Appeal Court judge ruled that the federal government was acting within its rights to end the CWB monopoly.
