REGINA – Consensus is a rare and precious commodity in the often rancorous debate about Canada’s grain marketing system.
But farmers of all political persuasions seemed ready to agree on at least one thing during the recent Western Grain Marketing Panel hearings.
The Canadian Wheat Board should be made more accountable to producers.
“I don’t know of any meeting where it didn’t come up,” panel member Wally Madill said after formal public hearings ended last week.
Unfortunately for panel members charged with the task of making recommendations to agriculture minister Ralph Goodale, accountability means different things to different people.
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For some, it means having farmers vote for the people who run the board, whether that means voting for commissioners, voting for a board of directors, electing delegates to oversee the board or strengthening the existing producer advisory committee.
For others, it means cutting all links between the board and government, maybe even turning the board into a farmer-run co-operative.
Still others focus on the board’s books, saying the selling agency must be more accountable in its financial reporting to farmers, having the auditor-general look at its books and giving farmers more detailed information about specific sales and prices.
Madill, a former chief executive officer of Alberta Wheat Pool, said while there are different views of what accountability means, there has been a common thread.
“It’s a question of farmers having more direct involvement in the whole wheat board process,” he said. “It’s having a say in what is going on inside.”
Fellow panelist Bill Duke says the message he got during the hearings was that many farmers feel they don’t have any influence over the board’s decisions.
“There’s still a separation between what many farmers feel would be the policies that are helpful to them and the actual policies of the board,” he said.
During two days of hearings in Regina, the panel heard a number of ideas on how to make the board more accountable.
Mike Halyk, a farmer from Melville, Sask., recommended creating a board of governors to set CWB policy. The governors would include CWB commissioners and four farmers selected from an elected body called the Western Canadian Grains Council.
He also said the board should set up regional offices across the Prairies to boost the agency’s profile among farmers.
Murray Fulton, a University of Saskatchewan agricultural economist, said if the board is to retain the support of the majority of prairie farmers, it must become more democratic. A board of directors should be elected and ordinary farmers should be more directly involved in setting policy.
“The CWB must develop an organizational structure that is innovative, responsive and that fosters an identification of farmers with the CWB and its activities,” said Fulton.
But the call for drastic changes in the board wasn’t unanimous.
Board already accountable
Terry Hanson, a farmer from Filmore, Sask. and a member of the CWB’s producer advisory committee, can’t figure out what all the fuss is about.
“It’s disturbing to me as a member of the advisory committee to hear complaints about lack of accountability,” he told the panel.
Farmers elect an advisory committee, the board publishes an audited annual report, it provides monthly price outlooks and it holds public meetings to talk to farmers, all the while operating at minimum cost to producers, he said.
When commissioners or other officials travel to the country to talk to farmers or explain CWB policies, or when the board pays for studies or distributes information to farmers, the agency is criticized by opponents for spending farmers’ money to promote itself, said Hanson.
“We’re damned if we do spend money on providing information and accountability to producers and we’re damned if we don’t.”
He said an election for a board of directors would be nothing more than a popularity contest that could be won by people who know nothing about selling grain.
