The future of the Canadian Wheat Board has effectively been taken out of the hands of prairie farmers and turned over to foreign bureaucrats and trade negotiators.
That has angered some farm officials, who say the World Trade Organization agreement signed July 31 represents a loss of Canadian sovereignty.
“Canadians should be able to decide what marketing structures they choose to have,” said David Brown, vice-president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan and chair of the organization’s trade committee.
The WTO agreement commits member countries to eliminate government financial guarantees for state trading enterprises such as the CWB.
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In addition, the right of importing or exporting STEs to operate as monopolies is being put on the table for future negotiations.
Both those issues would dramatically affect the ability of the board to conduct business as it does now. CWB officials say an end to the monopoly would ruin the board’s value to farmers.
Officials from several farm groups said last week it’s not right that foreign countries can impose such dramatic changes on an organization that has never been shown to engage in unfair or illegal trading practices.
If prairie farmers want to get together and sell their wheat through a single agency, they say, they should be able to do so.
University of Saskatchewan agricultural economist Hartley Furtan said it’s true that the framework deal represents a loss of sovereignty in terms of the CWB issue.
But he said Canada has long been committed to the idea of multilateralism, working together with other countries on issues like trade, and has often benefited from such an approach.
National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells said the whole nature of the WTO negotiations is undemocratic and offensive.
The discussions that produced the Aug. 1 agreement were conducted behind closed doors and culminated in a round-the-clock 24-hour negotiating session that left participants sleep-deprived and punchy.
“Then they come out and announce a deal,” he said. “Nobody I know thinks that’s a decent way to make decisions.”
Randy Hoback, chair of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said the idea that Canada can decide trade policy on its own is unrealistic in today’s interdependent world.
“Nobody wants to give up control to somebody else, whether it’s on farm or whether it’s the CWB,” he said.
But in some ways, it might benefit the prairie grain industry to have the divisive debate over the future of the board removed from the domestic political arena and settled from the outside.
He added he doesn’t think the agreement will result in the demise of the board.
“It may have to change its role, be a lot more transparent on sales to show that it’s trading fairly, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said Hoback.
That was disputed by Wells, who said that if the board was to lose its single desk authority as well as government financial guarantees, the end result would be the demise of the agency and a sharp drop in net income for grain farmers.
The WTO agreement was welcomed by some farm groups, including the Western Barley Growers Association and Grain Growers of Canada, both of which favour the open market over the CWB single desk.
Grain Growers president Ken Bee said whatever Canada may be giving up in terms of the CWB or supply management will be more than outweighed by the benefits provided by other sections of the agreement, which provide for an end to all export subsidies, reduction in trade-distorting domestic supports and increased market access for grain and oilseeds.
Furtan cautioned farmers not to overreact to the agreement, noting that much difficult negotiation lies ahead and it will probably be 10 years before any changes would take full effect.
“We ought to be thinking about how we can transition the board, but to say it’s done for and is going away, I can’t see that,” he said.
