If the outcome of the Canadian Wheat Board directors election is any
indication, support for single desk selling is on the rise among
prairie farmers.
Candidates who support the board’s monopoly on western grown wheat and
barley exports garnered slightly less than 56 percent of the 26,852
votes cast on the first ballot, which reflects the voter’s first choice.
That’s up from 48 percent support for single desk candidates on the
first ballot in the 2000 election.
In this year’s election, single desk candidates won four of the five
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directorships up for grabs.
In the 1998 election, single deskers won three of the five positions
available.
Still, open market supporters were claiming a moral victory.
“Obviously we’d have liked to have won more seats, but it is a pretty
positive result,” said Alanna Koch, chair of CARE, an organization that
supported open market candidates.
She was encouraged by the close result in three of the four seats won
by single deskers and by Dwayne Anderson’s win over incumbent single
desker Micheal Halyk in District 7. That gives the open marketers two
of the 10 elected seats on the board (Anderson and District 2 director
Jim Chatenay).
“This hasn’t set us back one speck,” said Koch.
But those claims were dismissed by delighted monopoly supporters, who
said both the popular vote and the number of seats won speak for
themselves.
“This is a victory, absolutely,” said CWB chair Ken Ritter, a
supporter of the board’s single desk authority.
National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells called it a decisive
victory, made all the more impressive given the well-organized and
well-financed campaigns by CARE-supported candidates and the highly
publicized jailing of anti-CWB farmers in Lethbridge this fall.
“This was as good a chance as they were going to have to make inroads,”
he said.
Allen Oberg, a single desk supporter who won in District 5, said the
results indicate that most wheat and barley growers believe the board
is good for their bottom lines.
“Given all the publicity around the wheat board, the majority of it
with a negative tone, I think the single desk side did pretty well,”
said Oberg.
In addition to the wins by newcomers Oberg and Anderson, incumbents Art
Macklin, Larry Hill and Bill Nicholson won re-election in District 1, 3
and 9 respectively.
Ritter said he thinks most farmers are tired of the often rancorous
debate over the board’s marketing powers that dominated the election
campaign.
But Koch said the debate isn’t going to go away and neither are the 44
percent of farmers who supported open market candidates in the election.
“I see continuing pressure on this issue,” she said, both from farmers
and from politicians and lobby groups who want to end the board’s
single desk status.
All sides agreed that the 43.3 percent turnout was disappointing and
steps must be taken to improve that for the next election in 2004.
