Not many farmers see the Canadian Wheat Board as an issue in the federal election.
Among those who do, most say the top priority for the next government should be to bring in “marketing freedom” and end the CWB’s single desk marketing system, a recent poll suggests. 
In an on-line pool conducted by Ipsos Forward Research, farmers were asked to identify the number one agricultural issue the next federal government must address immediately after taking office.
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Just twelve percent of prairie farmers who responded said the government needs to deal with the CWB issue right away.
That includes two distinct groups:
- Nine percent said the new government needs to bring in marketing freedom or a dual market and end the single desk.
- Three percent said the new government needs to maintain and protect the wheat board as a single desk seller.
Broken down by province, those identifying marketing freedom as the top priority for a new government accounted for nine percent in each of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Those who said maintaining the CWB single desk should be the top priority numbered one percent in Alberta, three percent in Saskatchewan and two percent in Manitoba.
The top items mentioned by poll respondents were farm input costs (20 percent nation-wide), survival of the family farm (18 percent), increased profitability (12 percent) and income stabilization (six percent). Other issues mentioned included the World Trade Organization, farm subsidies, the environment and farm debt.
Stewart Wells, president of the National Farmers Union and a supporter of the single desk, said the issues most-often mentioned are bread-and-butter, pocketbook issues that farmers think about every day.
He said many farmers don’t think of the CWB in those terms, although they should.
“A strong single desk CWB is a way to deal with those top three or four issues, because it puts more money into farmers’ pockets,” he said.
He also questioned the validity of calling farmers out of the blue and asking what their biggest issue is, suggesting many will just mention what happens to be on their mind at that moment.
“If I was called two days ago, I’d have said the biggest thing the federal government could do for me was to come and pick rocks.”
CWB director Ian McCreary said he doesn’t think most farmers see the CWB as a federal election issue.
“I think most see the CWB director elections as more important because that’s where they think a difference is made in dealing with the board’s future,” he said.
How farmers vote in a federal election is determined by a range of issues, most of them unrelated to agriculture or the CWB, he said.
He added that even if a large majority of prairie farmers say they intend to vote for the Conservatives, that doesn’t necessarily mean they support the Conservative position on the CWB.
“The majority of people who have voted for me in the director elections will vote Conservative,” said McCreary, a strong pro-single desk supporter.
“There’s a huge disconnect there I don’t understand.”
Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel, a supporter of the open market option and president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said she was surprised at how low the numbers were because for her, there’s no questions that implementing marketing choice should be the new government’s first act.
She said one reason that so few farmers mentioned the CWB in the survey might be that most consider the demise of the single desk to be a fait accompli.
“If they’re Conservatives and they vote Conservative and they expect the Conservatives to win, they don’t need to think about the issue any more,” she said.
She also agreed with McCreary that with the CWB and federal elections on at the same time, farmers are looking more to the CWB vote to express their views on the single desk.
The survey results are based on findings from an on-line survey of 856 farmers, part of an on-line group of some 2,000 farmers called Producers’ Perspectives – the Ipsos Canadian ArgiForum.
The survey was conducted Aug. 22 to Sept. 6. Based on the sample size, the national results are considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for the 507 prairie respondents is plue or minus 4.3 percentage points.
Complete poll results can be found on the Ipsos website at www.ipsos-na.com, under “News and Polls.”
