Canadian Wheat Board directors meeting in Winnipeg this week are discussing a federal government demand that they find a way to dismantle the single desk barley monopoly or else.
The “or else” options are not entirely clear but federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said he would like to get legislation through Parliament this spring to end the barley single desk by Aug. 1, 2008.
He said Jan. 29 after a three-hour meeting he organized with the CWB and wheat board critics that he would try to get a bill into the House of Commons within three weeks.
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And he made clear he expects the CWB to capitulate to the demands from the government and the barley industry players he selected for the Ottawa meeting.
“When those (CWB board) meetings conclude (on Friday), Canadian barley producers and industry officials expect the CWB to announce a clear road map toward barley marketing freedom and this government is going to hold the CWB accountable to fulfill the strong mandate they’ve been given today,” Ritz said.
However, Ritz conceded that without wheat board agreement, it will be more difficult for the minority Conservative government to get CWB Act amendments through Parliament.
Greg Arason, interim president and chief executive officer of the board, said after the meeting the board cannot legally agree to abandon the barley single desk for malting barley sales and exports.
“I have no mandate to abandon barley,” he said.
“There are restrictions that are placed on us and we have to abide by them. I think everyone recognized, including the minister, that that was not in the cards.”
Arason, who faced a room full of critics from the Western Barley Growers’ Association (WBGA), elevator companies, malting companies and brewers as well as the federal and Alberta governments, said the board has little flexibility to change its marketing mandate.
“There were suggestions that there are some grey areas that could be pursued,” he said.
“I think we have pretty well exhausted the grey areas. What we have to do now is work within the act as it now exists. If there is a willingness on the part of the government of Canada to change the act, then obviously that is a different issue but until that happens, we have no mandate to do anything else.”
Arason’s only allies at the meeting were board chief operating officer Ward Weisensel and Manitoba agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk.
The fact that the government’s invitation list was mainly limited to critics of the board monopoly outraged CWB supporters.
At a Parliament Hill news conference held while the meeting was underway at Agriculture Canada head offices, the National Farmers Union and representatives of the groups Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board and Save My CWB denounced the Conservatives for stacking the deck against the board and pandering to farmers and industry groups who want the monopoly dismantled.
“A majority of prairie farmers support the wheat board and want to see it continue as a single desk seller of wheat and barley and durum,” said former CWB director and Friends of the CWB representative Wilf Harder from Lowe Farm, Man.
“If we don’t stop this madness, I can tell you, and I firmly believe it, that supply management will be next to go, medicare and the CBC will follow.”
NFU director Glen Tait from Meota, Sask. said a fair vote among barley farmers would produce a different result than what the government’s 2007 plebiscite produced. Instead of 62 percent opting for either an end to the board’s involvement in barley or the board operating as one of the players in an open barley market, he said at least 75 percent would vote for keeping the monopoly.
“This meeting that agriculture minister Ritz has called is nothing more than a forum for the loudest and strongest of the anti-board forces to bully by weight of numbers the staff of the CWB,” Tait said.
The critics in the meeting saw things differently.
WBGA president Jeff Nielsen said producers and the industry need something better than the board’s recently unveiled CashPlus program for malting barley.
“We all agree, except the wheat board of course, that barley is in crisis mode right now,” he said.
“We have to move forward. CashPlus is a no-go. It’s dead.”
Phil de Kemp, president of the Malting Industry Association of Canada, said his member companies have not been investing in new capacity and Canada’s malting industry is falling behind because of the uncertainty. As well, farmers have told the industry that they want to deal directly with buyers, he added.
“If the issue becomes the clarity of the question in the plebiscite, everybody should be beyond that because quite frankly, if we have to do it again with a yes or no question, from what we’ve heard at the farm shows it is 90 percent of the farmers plus who need some other market signals if they are to grow barley,” de Kemp said.
“We need security of supply and we need to send signals and quite frankly, we haven’t spent a nickel in this country in 15 years on capacity increases and we told them we won’t spend money until changes are made.”
