A national right-wing lobby group has launched an advertising campaign urging the federal government to strip the Canadian Wheat Board of its single desk authority.
A senior wheat board official shrugged off the ad campaign, saying it includes misinformation and doesn’t address what the board sees as the key issue.
“Farmers should be the ones to make the decision on what to do with the organization, not government,” said Deanna Allen, the board’s vice-president of farmer relations and public affairs
The ad campaign is sponsored by the National Citizens Coalition, an organization once headed by prime minister Stephen Harper, and will appear in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and billboards across Western Canada over the next few weeks.
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The advertisements, which include a request for donations, ask “freedom-loving Canadians” to add their names to a petition on the group’s website.
NCC vice-president Gerry Nichols said in an interview from the group’s office in Toronto that the campaign is designed to remind the Conservative government to live up to its campaign pledge to end the monopoly.
“There will be lots of people who support the board who will be pushing the government to change its mind about that promise,” he said.
“We know politicians can be subjected to pressure so we want to put pressure on the other way.”
Nichols said ending the CWB monopoly has been a priority for the coalition for years and the group believes it is closer than ever to achieving that goal.
The campaign is funded largely by donations from western Canadian farmers who are members of the coalition and Nichols said the extent of the campaign will depend on how much money is available.
“I’d like to spend more than $50,000,” he said. “But we rely on our supporters to run a particular campaign, so the more support we get, the louder voice we’ll have and the more ads we’ll run.”
Allen said the coalition’s position is wrongheaded in that it takes the decision about the board’s future out of the hands of producers and gives it to politicians.
“Anyone who wants to take that decision away from farmers either is not a farmer themselves or doesn’t have farmers’ interests at heart.”
She said the board has no plans for a public campaign of its own, adding the agency will continue to talk about the issue with farmers and with policy makers in Ottawa.
Allen also took issue with the ads, which talk about farmers being jailed for trying to sell their own wheat to customers of their own choosing.
The headline on the newspaper ad reads: “It’s hard to believe selling wheat could actually be considered a crime.”
That’s a reference to a small number of farmers who have been jailed over the years, most notably in Alberta in the fall of 2002, for violating various customs regulations regarding shipping wheat across the U.S. border.
Allen said the Alberta farmers were looking to gain publicity for their cause and were not actually attempting to make a commercial sale of wheat to a U.S. buyer.
She added that the issue is now irrelevant because of the board’s new pricing options, particularly the daily price contract that enables producers to lock in U.S. elevator prices on a daily basis.
“The premise on which the ad is based is now irrelevant.”
Nichols said having a former coalition leader as prime minister should be an advantage in promoting its anti-single desk agenda.
“He (Harper) knows there is a problem with the wheat board monopoly and certainly he opposed it when he was president here,” he said.
“At least we don’t have a situation where we have to convince the prime minister of something because he already knows.”
