The Canadian Wheat Board, after a closed-door Ottawa meeting organized by the government that allowed critics to confront board leaders over its barley monopoly, agreed last week to talk with the government about reform, agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said Feb. 4.
After a three day strategic planning and board of directors meeting last week, board leaders including outgoing president Greg Arason and chair Ken Ritter told Ritz Feb. 1 that a ‘strategic planning group’ will meet with the government to consider how to respond to the demand from Conservatives and anti-monopoly barley industry groups that the single desk be ended for barley.
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“I take their offer to work with us at face value and welcome it,” Ritz said. “But I also was candid that I will continue to work on all options that are available to me at this time.”
That includes continuing plans to introduce into Parliament within a month amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board Act to end the barley monopoly.
Last week, opposition party MPs were speculating that if the minority Conservative government has not already fallen on a budget vote, it could make the wheat board amendments a confidence vote, forcing the Liberals to decide if they want to trigger an election on the wheat board issue that affects an area of the country where few Liberals are elected.
“I think it will be a confidence vote,” said Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter. “I would make it one if I was them. And I cannot imagine us not voting against it. This is a strong issue for us.”
New Democratic Party wheat board critic Pat Martin said he too is certain it would be a confidence motion and speculated that the Liberals, who have been avoiding Commons votes so the government does not fall, will be in a dilemma.
“I can almost guarantee the CWB vote will be a confidence vote,” he said Feb. 1 by e-mail. “It was in the throne speech. There’s no way Liberals would force an election on an issue of such relatively narrow interest if they’re not ready.”
The Jan. 29 meeting at Agriculture Canada headquarters had wheat board president Greg Arason and chief operating officer Ward Weisensel facing more than a dozen critics from the barley growers, maltsters, brewers and elevator companies, which insisted that the monopoly must end and the board’s attempt to answer criticisms with the CashPlus program was inadequate.
The only independent friend of the wheat board in the room was Manitoba agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk, who said later it was unfair.
“It was set up to bully the board,” she said. “It was not a consultation.”
All CWB board members, including the eight who support the monopoly, were invited but the board sent just two executives.
Outside the meeting, defenders of the CWB denounced the meeting as an undemocratic setup and Ritz as a bully trying to force the board to break the law.
“A majority of prairie farmers support the wheat board and want to see it continue as a single desk seller of wheat and barley and durum,” said former CWB director and Friends of the CWB representative Wilf Harder from Lowe Farm, Man., during a Jan. 29 news conference on Parliament Hill.
“If we don’t stop this madness, I can tell you, and I firmly believe it, that supply management will be next to go, medicare and the CBC will follow.”
After the meeting, Jeff Nielsen, president of the Western Barley Growers Association, said in an interview producers and the industry need something better than the board’s recently unveiled CashPlus program for malting barley.
“We all agree, except the wheat board of course, that barley is in crisis mode right now,” he said. “We have to move forward. CashPlus is a no-go. It’s dead.”
But CWB president Arason said the board has no option but to operate under the barley monopoly.
“What we have to do now is work within the act as it now exists,” he said. “If there is a willingness on the part of the government of Canada to change the act, then obviously that is a different issue but until that happens, we have no mandate to do anything else.”
Ritz said he welcomes the board agreement to discuss what he calls “a roadmap to barley marketing freedom,” but he also will be watching to make sure it is not a delaying tactic. He wants change by Aug. 1.
“If I determine it is a delaying tactic, I will obviously concentrate more on my other options, including legislation,” he said.
