It may seem like the tail wagging the dog, but critics of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly hope the small Ontario wheat board becomes a role model for its big prairie cousin.
Ontario Wheat Producers’ Marketing Board delegates voted recently to end the board’s export monopoly next year.
Farmers will have the option of selling all their grain to the board or selling all their own grain exclusively in the export market.
They will have an all-or-nothing choice to make every year.
“I don’t see how this cannot have an impact on the prairie debate,” said Reform party agriculture critic Jay Hill. “I think there are enough similarities between the boards that questions will be raised. There will be a perception that farmers in different regions are treated less fairly than others.”
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Manitoba Conservative Rick Borotsik insisted the Ontario decision will stir even greater western passions on the issue when the Senate agriculture committee travels west next week for public hearings.
“How can farmers in one part of the country be allowed choice and not worry about the ability of their wheat board to compete while farmers in another part of the country are told they can’t and it wouldn’t work,” he said.
“This will only exacerbate it in the West, with what is happening in Ontario.”
Lessons questionable
Canadian Wheat Board minister Ralph Goodale isn’t so sure the Ontario “experiment” holds any lessons for the prairie debate.
The Ontario board is much smaller and sells to fewer markets. “Whether the experience in one jurisdiction, just because of the sheer difference in size, could be directly comparable to the other, one would have to be cautious about that.”
But Goodale conceded prairie farmers will be interested and may consider it an experiment on whether a dual market would work. He insists it would not.
Still, Goodale said the critics would be wrong to criticize the CWB bill C-4 on the basis that it does not give western farmers what Ontario farmers have.
“If they want to pursue this kind of option or some variation on this option that is being examined now in Ontario, they democratically under C-4 will have the authority to do that,” he said. “It will be farmers who make the decision and not politicians.”
But Hill said Goodale’s argument that prairie farmers would be able to vote for directors who favor dual marketing is a flaw in his approach.
He said farmers should be judging potential directors on their business sense and experience, rather than their ideology on marketing.
