If a federal election is called and if the Conservatives win a majority, then “all bets are off” when it comes to the future of the Canadian Wheat Board, says agriculture and CWB minister Gerry Ritz.
“There will be major changes,” he said last week. “Producers will like them, the wheat board’s board of directors will not.”
He declined to be more specific, saying only that the government will give producers the changes they’ve been asking for.
If there is no election this spring, he said, the government will introduce a bill to strip the board of its single desk marketing authority over barley.
Read Also
Phosphate prices to remain high
Phosphate prices are expected to remain elevated, according to Mosaic’s president.
“We will bring forward strong legislation to give western Canadian producers the marketing freedom they demand,” he said, adding the bill could be introduced in the last week of February.
Ritz said the government may consider other options, such as export licences and buy-back provisions, to bring in an open market.
Any possibility that the board and Ottawa might reach accommodation on the contentious issue of barley marketing disappeared last week.
A group of six CWB officials, led by chair Ken Ritter and chief executive officer Greg Arason, met with Ritz and his officials in Ottawa on Feb. 12 to talk about what to do next on the barley file.
The meeting ended after about an hour, once it became clear the two sides were too far apart to reach any agreement. The next day, the CWB’s board of directors voted to break off discussions, saying there was no prospect of bridging the gap.
“We could not identify enough common ground to move forward,” CWB chair Ken Ritter told a Feb. 13 press conference.
He said the board took to the meeting a proposal on how to stabilize the grain marketing environment and end the uncertainty as farmers prepare for seeding, but it quickly became apparent the government wasn’t interested in discussing it.
Ritter said the board wants a more co-operative working relationship with the government, but that doesn’t seem possible in the highly charged political environment.
“We want to stay out of the big political game in Ottawa,” he said. “We’ll keep our nose to the grindstone and concentrate on doing our business.”
Within hours Ritz responded with a news conference of his own, saying he was “extremely disappointed” by the board’s action.
“I went into the meeting with the board in good faith to discuss how to make progress to marketing freedom,” he said. “The wheat board failed to return that good faith.”
He said he was optimistic after a Jan. 29 meeting of barley industry stakeholders, including the CWB, that the board was prepared to co-operate with the government in bringing in an open market.
“It turns out they didn’t hear the message,” he said, describing the Feb. 12 meeting as a waste of time.
The minister went on to lambaste the board, accusing it of being more concerned with protecting itself than working with the industry to benefit producers.
“Because of the board’s internal focus on survival, they refuse to discuss change,” he said.
Ritter said the board proposed that the two sides work together to achieve four goals: stabilizing the situation regarding the board’s single desk mandate; increasing the marketing agency’s efficiency and effectiveness; strengthening farmer control of the CWB, and developing a good working relationship between board and government.
During the course of the news conference, Ritz said the board should “get off its duff” and sell more grain, called farmers who support the single desk “the tin foil hat decoder ring crowd” and said the CWB should “lead, follow or get the hell out of the way” as the government moves to implement an open market for barley.
Ritter said the board has to follow the CWB Act, which states that the board is the single desk seller of wheat and barley.
He added the uncertainty over what will happen to that mandate makes it difficult for the board and others in the industry to carry on business.
“Business certainty is crucial,” he said. “You can’t go on from day to day not knowing whether you’re going to exist or not.”
Officials from a number of pro open market farm groups issued statements of support for the government following Ritz’s news conference, including the Western Barley Growers Association, the Market Choice Alliance and the Grain Growers of Canada.
