Saskatchewan’s former agriculture minister reneged on a promise to give new entrants first crack at new egg quota, the opposition’s critic for agriculture and a farmer both charged last week.
Clay Serby said in a January 2003 letter to an unregistered egg producer that quota waiting lists would be phased out “but existing individuals on these lists will be solely eligible for a first auction of new quota.”
That never happened, said Melville-Saltcoats MLA Bob Bjornerud.
“Imagine the surprise, Mr. Speaker, when these unregistered egg producers found a recent newspaper ad for a public auction for egg quota,” he said during Question Period.
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The auction, held April 15, offered four lots equivalent to more than 22,000 hens.
New industry entrants were eligible to bid on all four lots, but had exclusive rights to a total of 15,000 birds in two of the tenders.
Serby said the auction went about halfway to fulfilling his commitment.
“I wanted to see more people who are interested in being egg producers in the province get an opportunity to get into business,” he said, adding that existing registered producers also have to meet their financial obligations and need more quota to do that.
Terry Motz, an unregistered producer from Glidden, said he was promised quota 15 years ago when a production facility was taken out of his area.
“We went ahead and built a production facility with the promise from the (egg marketing) board that we would be getting this quota, and it never happened.”
Instead, he joined 81 other people on the waiting list. When the list was phased out, there were 41 people on it. Motz said many died, sold out or left the province without ever receiving quota.
He said new entrants can’t afford to compete against the existing 64 producers. Registered producers bought and sold quota before it was legal to do so, and obtained 70 percent of the new quota before the auction, he added.
Motz said they paid between $26 and $33 per bird, yet quota is selling for $120 per bird.
“We can’t afford it,” Motz said.
“We’re probably going to shut down our facility. We also have a federally inspected grading station and that’s probably going to go by the wayside because we can’t buy eggs; they belong to the egg marketing board. So we’re kind of done.”
Motz said Serby should honour his promise, and make quota available for new entrants only.
“At least offer them something, maybe the same price as the registered producers paid.”
Serby said the decision to allocate only certain lots for new entrants was made by the department and the egg marketing board and he respects it.
