If the Canadian Wheat Board director elections can be considered a vote on the single desk versus the open market, then farmers have delivered a strong message to the federal government.
Leave the single desk alone.
Given a choice between candidates who supported the single desk and candidates who wanted to replace it with an open market for wheat and barley, farmers opted for the single deskers.
Single desk supporters say the numbers speak for themselves:
- Four of the five CWB district districts, or 80 percent, were won by single desk supporters.
- The five candidates who campaigned on a pledge to retain the board’s single desk marketing powers received a total of 9,564 votes, or 60.3 percent of the votes counted.
- The nine candidates who campaigned to end the single desk and bring in an open market for wheat and barley received 6,311 votes, or 39.7 percent of the votes.
- Support for single desk candidates at 60.3 percent was higher than in the previous election in the same five districts four years ago, when 56 percent supported single desk candidates.
- When combined with the five directors who didn’t have to seek re-election, the 10 farmer-elected directors support the single desk by a margin of eight to two.
- Of the 31,081 eligible voters, 20 percent voted for open market candidates and 31 percent for single desk supporters.
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For those fighting to retain the board’s sales monopoly over exports of wheat and barley, the results were welcome news.
“This clear democratic indication from farmers … turfs the federal Conservative plans to dismantle the CWB,” said Larry Bohdanovich, a Manitoba farmer and spokesperson for Real Voice for Choice.
“They should back off and let everybody get back to business.”
CWB chair Ken Ritter also welcomed the election results.
“Farmers have had a direct say in half of the prairies and they’ve clearly supported candidates who favour the single desk,” he said.
“That should give the government pause as to how they approach this in the future.”
CWB minister Chuck Strahl, some losing candidates and farm groups that support the open market, said the election results hold little significance and only reveal a sharp division of opinion among farmers.
The minister said in an interview the results indicate that prairie farmers are divided on the single desk issue.
He said the results are not clear cut because many farmers may have been voting on the premise that the end of the single desk means the end of the wheat board, which he insisted is not the case.
Strahl said single desk supporters misrepresented the government’s intention and voters were frightened into voting for them.
“What came across in the elections is that farmers want the CWB there as an option, and I want it there as well,” he said.
The pro-open market Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association said 39 percent support for open market candidates indicates the single desk is “unsustainable.”
“These results just go to show that the CWB is not reflecting the interests of all farmers,” said association president Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel.
In the House of Commons Dec. 11, Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said the vote shows “the government does not speak for the majority of western grain farmers when it comes to the wheat board and it never did.”
He told Strahl that if he is of “sound mind”, he will quit listening to the anti-monopoly views of parliamentary secretary David Anderson because two thirds of the votes cast in Anderson’s riding supported the single desk.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said the disparity between the election results and the Conservative determination to abolish the monopoly show a need for “a clear question and a credible voters’ list” in a farmer vote before any decision is taken.
Voter turnout in the 2006 election was higher than ever before. Of the 31,081 ballots sent out to a truncated voters list, 15,960 were returned, for a record voter turnout of 51.3 percent. The average for the previous four elections was 39.9 percent, with a record low of 32.7 percent in 2004.
Observers say that reflects a combination of the reduced voters list and increased interest because the future of the board was clearly at stake.
The newly elected directors are expected to assume office on Dec. 31, and serve a four-year term.
