The Canadian Wheat Board wants to meet with federal agriculture and CWB minister Gerry Ritz to talk about the controversy surrounding the board’s contingency fund,
But getting the minister and CWB officials in the same room may not be easy.
A spokesperson for Ritz said officials in the minister’s office are trying to line up such a meeting.
“We are trying to find something in the minister’s schedule but there isn’t a date that has been set yet,” he said last week.
Board officials say the agency has been trying to arrange a meeting since early January to discuss a variety of issues, including the contingency fund.
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A spokesperson said the board has made repeated requests by telephone and letter, both before and after the fund became a public issue.
“We have had no response,” Maureen Fitzhenry said March 9, noting the most recent request was made in a Feb. 27 letter.
Face-to-face meetings between the minister and the CWB are rare.
According to CWB records, Ritz has not visited the CWB head office in Winnipeg since his appointment in August 2007.
During those 20 months, Ritz has participated in two teleconference calls with the agency’s board of directors, most recently in July 2008, but never met with the directors in person. Ritz has met CWB chair Larry Hill and chief executive officer Ian White in April and June of 2008.
The February letter from the CWB asked for a meeting with Ritz to discuss the board’s 2007-08 financial results, which included record income of $7.2 billion from grain sales and a $130 million deficit in the board’s contingency fund.
Critics have seized on the contingency fund deficit to attack the board’s risk management strategy, marketing practices and financial management abilities.
The debate has seen various stakeholders line up over single desk marketing.
“We have serious concerns about whether senior CWB managers have the appropriate knowledge and expertise required for the job,” said Western Barley Growers Association president Brian Otto.
Saskatchewan MP David Anderson, parliamentary secretary to Ritz, accused the board of using the contingency fund like a “carnival shell game.”
“It does not matter how slickly the CWB shuffles the shells, the bottom line is they lost farmers’ money,” he said.
National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells said problems with the contingency fund are the responsibility of open-market proponents like Anderson. He said the board was pressured by those groups to go outside the pooling system and offer farmers high-risk pricing options.
“The higher marketing risk has created the need for a contingency fund, and now Anderson is complaining about the use of that ‘self-insurance’ fund to protect farmers and mitigate the risk,” said Wells.
Fitzhenry said it has been a challenge to explain the often complicated and confusing trading activities that resulted in the contingency fund deficit. She said people have a right to question the board’s decisions, and the agency will go into as much detail as people need.
But she rejected suggestions that the agency is trying to hide something.
“It looks as though that is the impression some people are trying to create but that is absolutely not true,” she said.
The board redesigned its risk management strategy following the wild market fluctuations of January to March 2008 with the assistance of an outside financial expert.
There have been calls for a full review of the CWB by the federal auditor general. The board said it is open to any review, although it would be most efficient and productive to focus on issues associated with the contingency fund.
