REGINA – After 15 town hall meetings, 13 days of formal public hearings and 150 oral and written submissions, now comes the hard part.
The nine members of the Western Grain Marketing Panel must set about the task of writing a report that could play a large role in determining the future shape of Canada’s grain marketing system.
Two days of hearings in Regina this week marked the end of the federally appointed panel’s consultations with prairie farmers and others in the grain industry.
The panelists will gather in Saskatoon April 19-21 to start drafting a report that is to be in the hands of federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale by the end of June.
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It won’t be easy, say the panelists.
“In the last couple of weeks we’ve really just been inundated with information,” said Tom Molloy, the Saskatoon lawyer chairing the panel. “Now we have to sit down and look at everything and reflect on it.”
Owen McAuley, a panel member and farmer from Manitoba, said the hearings have highlighted the great divide between people on either extreme of the debate about grain marketing.
There’s probably nothing the panel can say to completely satisfy those who want the system left unchanged and those who blame the Canadian Wheat Board for all their problems, he said.
But there is at least one common thread running through the process.
“Almost to the person, everybody’s looking for some change,” said McAuley. “It’s the degree of change that people haven’t come to a consensus on.”
The first morning of hearings in Regina reflected that great divide.
Several presenters said farmers have done well by the CWB monopoly and urged panelists not to be swayed by talk about philosophy and ideology.
“Freedom of choice has been the biggest argument, but at what cost?” said Al McDonald, a Strasbourg, Sask., farmer representing the Family Farm Foundation. He said there’s no question farmers get a better price by selling through the board.
But a farmer who lives near the U.S. border said the existing system prevents him from taking full advantage of premium markets across the line.
Conrad Johnson of Bracken, Sask., also said farmers who grow quality crops and have good marketing skills are “screwed” by price pooling.
“Pay me for what I grow,” he said. “Why does that seem like such an unreasonable request?”
McAuley said the panel has heard more presentations that support the wheat board system with some changes, as opposed to those who want to change single-desk selling.
“But I think it goes beyond counting numbers,” he said. “You have to somehow address the growing number of people who want change and I think if the majority ignore it, the strength of the change side only grows.”
