At least 11,000 prairie farmers will have a chance to vote on whether they want to market wheat through the Canadian Wheat Board’s single desk or the open market.
That’s how many ballots the government of Manitoba will send out to wheat and barley growers in the province over the next few weeks.
Whether their counterparts in Saskatchewan will vote in a provincial plebiscite has yet to be determined.
The question on the Manitoba ballot asks farmers to indicate their agreement with one of two choices:
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
- I wish to maintain the ability to market all wheat, with the continuing exception of wheat sold domestically for feed, through the CWB single desk system.
- I wish to remove the single desk marketing system from the CWB and sell all wheat through an open market system.
The same question is being asked about barley.
The ballots are to be returned by Jan. 5, with the results announced by the middle of the month.
The vote will cost Manitoba taxpayers about $80,000, and will be administered, counted and audited by consulting firm Meyers Norris Penny.
Manitoba agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk said the government decided to hold the vote to ensure the federal government knows where Manitoba farmers stand on the issue.
“Until farmers have spoken, no government has any mandate to make changes to an institution that belongs not to politicians in Ottawa, but to farmers in the Prairies,” she said.
The federal government has announced plans to hold a non-binding plebiscite on barley marketing in the new year, but has not yet announced all of the details, including the question to be asked. It has not announced any plans to hold a similar vote on wheat.
The CWB Act requires that the government hold a plebiscite among farmers before adding or removing any grains from the board’s single desk authority.
Wowchuk criticized the way the Conservative government has handled the wheat board issue, saying CWB minister Chuck Strahl has acted “unilaterally and aggressively” by stacking the CWB board of directors with appointees who support the open market, refusing to engage in discussions with single desk proponents, prohibiting the CWB from participating in the debate, refusing to commit to a plebiscite on wheat, and making plans to fire the board president and chief executive officer Adrian Measner.
Keystone Agricultural Producers president David Rolfe said that while KAP wants the federal government to hold a binding prairie-wide plebiscite on both wheat and barley, the Manitoba vote will at least allow farmers to express their views on the CWB issue in a clear and definitive way.
He said Strahl should play close attention to the results of the provincial vote, and he pledged that KAP will respect the outcome no matter which way it goes.
Rolfe also urged farmers to read a document prepared by KAP, available on its website at www.kap.mb.ca, that outlines a series of questions farmers should ask themselves before making a decision on the single desk issue.
The National Farmers Union also welcomed the government’s initiative, saying the plebiscite will bring some “much-needed sanity” to the increasingly fractious debate over the future of the single desk.
NFU president Stewart Wells said the loss of a single desk CWB would severely hurt the Manitoba port of Churchill and indirectly lead to huge increases in freight rates out of the province.
“The NFU urges all eligible farmers to vote in order to send a strong message to those who would destroy the CWB on the basis of ideological delusions,” he said.
However Joseph Janzen, vice-president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, said he doesn’t see the point of the provincial government, which has no authority over grain marketing, conducting what amounts to nothing more than an expensive opinion poll.
There have already been lots of surveys on the issue, he said, and the federal government has made a decision to move forward with change.
“I would hope that no matter what the results, the federal government will stick to its promise to bring in marketing choice,” he said.
All Manitoba producers who grew wheat or barley in the last two years, based on the provincial crop insurance database, will automatically receive a ballot.
Farmers who didn’t purchase insurance or are not named in their farm’s contract can get on the voters list by filling out a statutory declaration by Dec. 18.
Forms are available on the provincial agriculture department’s website and at local agriculture offices.
Meanwhile, Saskatchewan agriculture minister Mark Wartman said no decision will be made on whether to hold a plebiscite in that province until the federal government releases complete details on its barley plebiscite.
He said the province will hold its own vote if it feels the federal vote questions are skewed or the voters list manipulated in order to produce a certain result. It also wants Ottawa to commit to holding a vote on wheat.
“If the federal government does not have a clear, honest plebiscite, then we will,” he said.
