Interviews are underway in the search for a new president and chief executive officer for the Canadian Wheat Board.
And for the first time, officials from the prime minister’s office and the privy council office, are sitting in on the interviews as observers.
Ken Ritter, CWB chair and also chair of the search committee conducting the interviews, declined to comment on the significance of the presence of government officials during the interviews.
“All I can say is the committee to date has worked well together,” he said. “That’s as far as I am willing to discuss it.”
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The search committee is made up of five CWB directors and two government officials. It will make a recommendation to the government, which will make the appointment.
Ritter was reluctant to comment on the search process other than to confirm interviews are “in progress” and to say there were a number of good applicants who all have some knowledge of the grain industry.
The committee will make a recommendation to the board of directors, which then passes that on to the federal government, which will make the appointment.
That has led to fears among supporters of the CWB’s single desk that the government could appoint someone who supports its goal of ending the single desk for barley and wheat regardless of the committee’s recommendation. The board of directors has what amounts to a veto over the selection by virtue of the fact that it will set compensation for the CEO.
If it doesn’t agree with the appointment, it could theoretically set the salary so low that the appointee would decline the job.
The new CEO will replace Greg Arason, who was appointed on an interim basis after Adrian Measner was fired in December 2006 for publicly supporting and promoting the single desk.
When Measner was appointed in 2002, there was no government involvement other than to rubber-stamp the board of director’s recommendation.
