REGINA – Saskatchewan agriculture minister Darrel Cunningham has scrapped plans to appoint new members to the Cattle Marketing Deductions Act and Horned Cattle Trust Fund boards.
Instead, he said in an interview last week, there will be an elected board.
Cunningham said disagreements over who should be on an amalgamated board led to his decision.
Earlier this year he had announced plans to combine the boards, and appoint members from Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, National Farmers Union and members at large.
Groups like the Sask. Stock Growers, Sask. Livestock Association and various breed associations said neither the pool nor the NFU truly represented livestock producers and shouldn’t have a place on the board. They also said the two boards should not be combined because one represents a voluntary checkoff contribution for beef research and the other is a tax for having horned cattle.
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Subsequent meetings failed to resolve the issue.
Cunningham said last week he’s had enough hassle over the situation.
“I don’t want to be in the middle of their politics,” he said. “I don’t know how more democratic you can make it.”
The election of a board is still some months away, but the mechanism to provide for the vote exists under the Agri-Food Act in the same way as votes are held for the canola growers, pulse growers and pork producers.
Stock growers president Wilf Campbell said an elected board is not acceptable to his association.
He said the pool has money to spend to get its members elected and could soon take control of the board and producer money.
Campbell said both the pool and the NFU didn’t want to be on the checkoff board when it first began and he doesn’t know why they want to be on it now.
“Maybe they see that it’s working and they’re not part of it,” he said.
Cunningham said groups like the stock growers should have no trouble electing their own members to the new board if they truly represent the industry as they say.
