Although ending the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly has been a key policy objective of western Conservatives for decades, the government continues to tell Ontario wheat producers they provided the template.
Beginning in 1988, its first federal election as a fledgling political force, the Reform party campaigned across the Prairies against the CWB single desk.
Yet last week, Ontario Conservative MP Pierre Lemieux, parliamentary secretary to agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, told members of the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) annual meeting in London, Ont., that they helped inspire the government to act.
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Eight years ago, producers in that province voted to end the Ontario Wheat Board single desk.
“The Ontario grain industry was certainly a huge inspiration for the move to marketing freedom in Western Canada,” said Lemieux.
He noted that Ritz announced CWB legislation on the eastern Ontario farm of former GFO president Don Kenney.
“With the passage of (CWB legislation) in December, western farmers finally have the same freedom to run their businesses that you enjoy here in Ontario. Your wheat industry went to an open market eight years ago and you haven’t looked back.”
Lemieux said the Ontario industry has expanded to two million tonnes with close to half of it exported. As well, wheat value-adding has expanded in the province.
“In the same way, we’re already seeing marketing freedom injecting new life into the western Canadian wheat industry with new value-added investments and new risk management tools for farmers,” he said.
Lemieux said there is “a reinvigorated CWB that’s ready to take farmers’ grain as a viable marketing option, just as GFO is here in Ontario.”
In fact, the final shape of the prairie grain industry in the aftermath of the CWB single desk has yet to be determined as grain industry ownership realigns and the CWB presence and programs evolve.
During the House of Commons debate on wheat board legislation last autumn, Conservative MPs often cited the Ontario experience as a reason to give western farmers the same open market that their Ontario counterparts have.
Opponents were quick to point out that while Ontario wheat farmers voted to end the marketing monopoly, it was imposed on western producers without a similar vote — an issue that is now before the courts.
They said the comparison was not appropriate.
