Canadian Wheat Board minister Ralph Goodale is expected to deliver a message this week to world grain industry officials that is familiar to audiences here at home.
According to a text released in advance of a speech scheduled to be given at the International Grains Council’s annual conference, Goodale was to give a spirited defence of Canada’s monopoly grain marketing agency, along with a blunt critique of United States farm programs and a plea for an end to trade-distorting export and domestic subsidies around the world.
In his June 15 opening address to the conference in Regina, Goodale was expected to tell his international audience that the Canadian government will resolutely defend the wheat board against those who argue that it engages in unfair trading practices.
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“Despite the beliefs of some that it somehow subsidizes Canadian farmers, it is completely market driven,” the advance text read.
Anyone who doubts that need only look at the eight investigations of wheat board trading practices carried out by a variety of U.S. government organizations during the last decade.
The board “came out clean,” he said, because there was no wrongdoing to be found.
All of the wheat board’s revenues come from its grain sales and all of the proceeds from its sales (minus handling, transportation and marketing costs) are passed back to farmers.
In turn, Canadian farmers make their individual cropping decisions based on those market returns, with no commodity-specific government support or subsidy.
By contrast, said Goodale, U.S. growers have benefited in recent years from “significant increases in financial assistance” from their government, largely in the form of enriched production flexibility contracts and the triggering of loan deficiency payments.
He quoted statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development indicating that U.S. wheat growers receive eight times as much government support as their counterparts in Canada.
In Europe, government support is 15 times higher than in Canada.
Goodale was to tell the crowd of about 500 high-ranking grain industry officials and government bureaucrats from more than 40 countries that world grain trade must be rid of export subsidies, trade-distorting subsidies, export taxes and import restrictions.
“If we want importing countries to rely on us for their supplies, they need to be confident that their source will not be artificially choked off,” according to the text.
