As the House of Commons prepares to get back to work, Canadian Wheat
Board officials and supporters are downplaying the significance of
criticism that MPs might have for the agency.
Earlier this year the Commons agriculture committee recommended that
the board set up a temporary open market experiment.
CWB critics say that signals a growing political momentum against the
board’s monopoly in Parliament.
But one wheat board director said MPs’ opinions on the board’s
marketing mandate are irrelevant.
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“I haven’t lost a great deal of sleep over it,” said CWB director Ian
McCreary, a strong supporter of the agency’s export monopoly on western
grown wheat and barley.
He said the CWB Act lays out a procedure for changing the board’s
marketing powers and it has little to do with MPs in Ottawa and
everything to do with farmers in Western Canada.
The act says the board’s mandate can be changed only as a result of a
plebiscite among prairie farmers, which can be initiated only after the
minister for the CWB has first consulted with the agency’s board of
directors.
McCreary said that’s the appropriate way to deal with questions about
the board’s marketing mandate, not through Commons committee reports or
MPs’ lobbying.
“It would make no sense for the government to have passed that
(legislation) and say it’s farmers’ choice, but then because some
farmers are complaining, do something different,” he said.
Darrin Qualman, executive secretary of the National Farmers Union,
which supports the board’s monopoly, said it’s inconceivable to him
that the federal government would bring in changes to the agency that
run counter to wishes of the wheat board’s elected directors.
“It would be very illegitimate for the government on one hand to say
‘we’ll have elections and turn the board over to farmers,’ and on the
other hand say they’re going to wade into the middle of the debate and
change policy in a way farmers haven’t indicated,” Qualman said.
McCreary said MPs and all Canadians should recognize the financial and
other benefits that the board provides to prairie farmers.
But he added that increased tensions between government and the board
are a result of the agency’s restructuring from a government agency to
a farmer-controlled marketing organization.
That has been reflected not only in criticism of the board by some MPs,
but also in the board’s criticism of government policies such as rail
competition and the agricultural policy framework.
“I think that has been a big shock for Ottawa, but we see it as a
natural extension,” said McCreary. “The board is now owned by farmers
and we have an obligation to put farmers’ concerns front and centre all
the time. That’s our only mandate.”