SASKATOON – Agriculture minister Ralph Goodale won’t hear anything surprising when he meets with Saskatchewan Wheat Pool delegates this week.
They’ll be reiterating longstanding pool policy in support of orderly marketing and telling the minister not to implement the Western Grain Marketing Panel’s recommendations that would end the board’s export monopoly on feed barley and some wheat.
“The delegates want to impress upon Mr. Goodale the support of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool for the Canadian Wheat Board,” said pool president Leroy Larsen. “They are prepared to leave their harvest machinery and come in to this meeting to do so.”
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Question and answer
The minister is scheduled to take part in a question and answer session with the pool’s 124 elected representatives on Aug. 30 at a downtown Regina hotel.
The meeting represents the latest volley fired by farmers fighting to retain the board as the single-desk seller of prairie wheat and barley, with price pooling and government-guaranteed initial payments.
In the last few weeks board supporters have held a number of well-attended rallies across the prairies, flooded newspapers with letters to the editor and sent thousands of letters to Goodale’s office urging him to leave the board’s basic powers untouched.
Pool delegate Larry Gislason, of Foam Lake, said pool members in his area are “100 percent behind the wheat board” and want to see both feed barley and wheat remain with the board.
He’s worried about the board’s fate.
“I think Goodale has backed himself into a corner,” he said. “I believe he figured the panel would come out stronger for the wheat board and when it didn’t that put him into a real bind.”
Delegate Kim Persson, of Stockholm, expects there will be changes to the way the board is governed but is hopeful the momentum has swung in favor of the board keeping its monopoly powers.
“I think (Goodale) is on our side personally,” he said, adding it remains to be seen whether the minister has the political will or influence to keep the board intact.
Larsen said he has always been convinced that the vast majority of farmers in Saskatchewan favor the board marketing system, but they never believed there was a serious threat to the agency’s future.
“I think when the panel report came out people realized what they had always thought was there forever was in jeopardy, and they became fairly vocal about it.”
He said delegates will use the meeting to tell the minister how the changes proposed by the panel would adversely affect individual farmers, the pool and the Canadian grain industry.
