Reform party agriculture critic Howard Hilstrom has suggested two prairie grain co-operatives become the vehicle for making the Canadian Wheat Board private and voluntary.
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool president Leroy Larsen quickly dismissed any idea the pool would be interested in Hilstrom’s scheme.
“We support the Canadian Wheat Board concept as it is and any proposal to privatize it would destroy the advantages it now has,” Larsen said Dec. 13 from Regina. “I don’t think we would want to be part of that.”
During a Dec. 10 House of Commons debate on agriculture, Hilstrom said the Prairie farm income crisis shows the wheat board in its present monopoly state is not helping farmers increase their income.
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“The reason is that the wheat board does not have the ability to provide independent marketing for individual farmers who could, by looking at their own marketing, maximize their prices,” said the Manitoba MP.
“I propose that the Canadian Wheat Board assets be sold off. They should be sold to a consortium named the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and Agricore. That would become their marketing arm, two organizations that are set up to pool the returns for all farmers …. The farmers who did not want to be part of that organization would end up marketing on their own.”
Open up discussion
Hilstrom said he proposed the idea so the issue of wheat board privatization could be debated.
“I have not worked out all the details about how this could work, what government guarantees would be there and like that but this is one way farmers could have a choice,” he said. “I am interested in reaction.”
Larsen said the pools had their own marketing arm in the 1920s and it went bankrupt in the crash of 1929.
“That’s where I’m coming from on this,” he said. “We have had a version of that and it did not work.”
