The federal government last week resumed its effort to reform the 62-year-old Canadian Wheat Board.
It unveiled legislation that sets the stage for the 1998 advent of a board largely controlled by farmer-elected directors and able to order farmer votes on future CWB powers.
The battle lines quickly were drawn, in the House of Commons where the debate will be a prominent feature of the first months of the new Parliament and in the countryside.
Defenders of the wheat board monopoly, including the New Democratic Party caucus and the National Farmers Union, worried that the legislation plants the seeds for a weaker CWB.
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“There is a potential here to dismantle the board,” NFU president Nettie Wiebe said. “Farmers must realize that when elections are called, grain trade players with resources and an agenda may be able to influence who gets elected.”
Critics of the wheat board monopoly, including the Reform party, said the bill does not go far enough.
“This bill fails by not offering farmers a marketing choice and by not lightening the yoke that now rests on western Canadian farmers,” said Reform agriculture critic Jay Hill, who raised the issue in the House of Commons Sept. 26.
Create divisions
Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association president Larry Maguire warned that government failure to offer farmers a voluntary board “will only deepen divisions in the farming industry.”
Critics of the CWB monopoly said they will target the Liberal decision to give farmers the right to call for plebiscites on adding new crops to the board’s jurisdiction, as well as to remove crops.
Supporters of the board monopoly say they will target a provision of the bill allowing the wheat board to make cash purchases of grain outside the pools. “That will undermine the pooling principle,” warned Wiebe.
For Canadian Wheat Board minister Ralph Goodale, the goal is to get the legislation through Parliament by the end of the year or in early 1998 to allow farmer elections to 10 of 15 board of director seats as early as next winter.
He wants the new board functioning by Aug. 1, 1998, although the legislation actually sets Dec. 31, 1998 as the deadline.
To speed it through the Commons, where an earlier version of the bill died in the last Parliament when the election was called, he will send the bill directly to the Commons agriculture committee for hearings, dispensing with second reading debate in the Commons.
The committee is not expected to be formed and start meeting for several weeks.
Goodale said critics who think the government has not moved far enough should think again.
The new board structure will be more flexible, offer farmers their first chance to elect a majority to the board, and for the first time, lay out the rules for holding future votes on board jurisdiction, he told a Sept. 25 news conference.
In most respects, the new legislation reflects the bill that died in the last Parliament. The major change is that it dispenses with an interim board of directors and moves directly to an elected board next year. Rules of the vote will be written during the winter.
The federal government will appoint the president and continue to guarantee initial payments and CWB borrowings. The annual business plan will have to be submitted to the finance department for approval.
However, the farmer-controlled board will fix the salary of the president and the chair.
