opinion
The simmering argument over Canadian Wheat Board powers involves much more than marketing tactics. Fundamentally, it is an argument over whether co-operative principles are still relevant.
Chief commissioner Lorne Hehn explained it well at a news conference last week, when he said the board has been based on a simple principle:
“If farmers band together to market their grain through a single agency which is back-stopped by the federal government, then everyone will be better off economically at the end of the year and at the end of a lifetime in farming.
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“There has always been something very rural and very Canadian about this simple but very profound concept – people working together and people sharing in the results.”
Although the board is not literally a co-operative, because federal sponsorship has been necessary to guarantee initial payments, it has effectively acted like a marketing co-operative and has traditionally found its strongest support from the co-operative movement.
An earlier generation of farmers knew the value of co-operation, and of having co-operatives work to promote co-operation.
Almost a half-century ago, as the world was emerging from the devastation of the Second World War, a president of Alberta Wheat Pool, Ben Plumer, declared: “It is the belief of co-operatives that the only path to prosperity and peace is the path of equality, of co-operation and of human brotherhood. More and more the public mind is coming to realize that co-operation must develop in place of competition in order to prevent conflict and bring about a fairer and more equitable distribution of wealth.”
Co-ops of that time (1946) fully realized the need to be profitable, cost-competitive, and successful in market share. Like their members, they had just endured the Depression and they had no money to spare on frills. But they believed that supporting co-operation in its various forms, including orderly marketing, was not a frill.
Obviously, times have changed, with one small example being last week’s comments from an Alberta Pool spokesperson:
“From a corporate perspective, it makes no difference to us whatsoever whether we have a Canadian Wheat Board or whether we have any other system of marketing. From a commercial perspective, we’re going to operate in whatever environment is there.”
As Plumer noted in 1946, it’s not guaranteed that all co-ops will be strong forces for social and economic justice. Unless its members have the co-operative spirit, he said, a co-op “resembles private business established and operated for profit alone.”
