Conservative agriculture minister Gerry Ritz predicted before last week’s national Liberal convention in Ottawa that the party would promise to resurrect the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly if re-elected.
He was wrong.
Delegates at the conference did approve without debate Jan. 15 a resolution that called on the Conservative government to hold a vote among prairie grain farmers before changing the board’s monopoly powers, as legislation requires.
However, the resolution was submitted before the Conservative government pushed legislation through Parliament last month to end the CWB monopoly July 31, 2012, without a farmer vote.
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Liberal agriculture and CWB critic Frank Valeriote said in an interview the party is not committing to trying to resurrect the monopoly if it retakes government. It would be almost impossible, he added.
“Under WTO (World Trade Organization) rules, we could only bring back the single desk with considerable penalties and that is not what we are proposing,” said the MP from Guelph, Ont.
“I see this resolution as a mandate from this convention and the party to keep the government’s feet to the fire on this, to keep an eye on what the effect on farmers is of the end of the single desk, to keep this issue alive even if the single desk is gone.”
At a Jan. 13 meeting between Liberal MPs and senators and delegates, Saskatchewan senator Bob Peterson said Liberal arguments against Conservative wheat board policy should pay political dividends once the negative implications of eroding the CWB are evident.
“We fought it,” he said.
“Farmers in Western Canada recognize that it was the Liberal party that fought for them. I hope we get results from that when rural voters recognize who were their real defenders.”
