Three prairie farmers will meet in a Winnipeg hotel this week to decide the future of Canadian Wheat Board elections.
The members of the election review panel will get together Nov. 11-12 to finalize the report that they will present to CWB minister Reg Alcock at the end of the month.
The review has had a relatively low public profile for a CWB-related issue, but industry officials say it has the potential to bring big changes not only to the election, but also to the board’s governance and relationship with farmers.
Read Also
Europe holds promise for Canadian lentils
Pulse Canada is trying to help boost lentil consumption in Europe, which is already the fourth largest market.
“I think this has been a real sleeper,” said National Farmers Union executive secretary Terry Pugh.
“Some of the issues they’re looking at really go to the heart of the future of the board in many ways.”
Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association president Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel said some of the changes proposed by farm groups could have a big impact on the marketing agency.
“It certainly would be significant progress if we got what we need to get,” she said.
The issue with the potential to have the biggest impact is probably the idea of moving from “one permit book, one vote” to a weighted ballot, giving some farmers more votes than others, depending on how much business they do with the grain marketing agency.
It’s a highly contentious question on which farm groups and even CWB directors disagree.
Proponents of a weighted ballot say it would make the board more like a corporation and more responsive to its major stakeholders.
Opponents say it would give too much influence to big farmers and would make the board less of a farmer-controlled organization.
The review panel, made up of farmers Greg Porozni, Cecilia Olver and David Rolfe, was set up by Alcock in June to review the CWB election process.
The terms of reference included virtually every aspect of the election, including who should vote, the weighted ballot, electoral boundaries, spending limits on candidates and third parties, the preferential ballot, who should run the election and a code of conduct for candidates and the CWB during the election period.
All those issues have been raised at various times during the four elections that have been held since 1998.
Panel members say they resolved the easy issues through a series of conference calls over recent weeks.
The tough ones, including some on which the panelists disagreed, were left for the meeting in Winnipeg.
“I’m hoping we will be able to reach a consensus on everything in those two days,” said Porozni of Willingdon, Alta.
“We’ll hash it out there and one way or another we’ll get it done.”
Panels members interviewed last week declined to identify which issues have been settled and which have yet to be resolved. If the panelists can’t agree on certain issues, it’s possible they will have to break the impasse with a majority vote.
“I hope we don’t have to do that,” said Olver of Corning, Sask., adding she’s optimistic they’ll be able to find a consensus.
At the same time, she doesn’t expect the panel’s recommendations to reflect all the different views held by farmers.
“I know we’re not going to be able to please everybody,” she said.
“But hopefully we can come up with something that’s going to be better than what we have.”
CWB chair Ken Ritter said he wants to wait until he sees the panel’s report before commenting on how the board’s governance might be affected by some of the changes that have been proposed.
“Certainly there have been issues, and I’m assuming they’ll use rational thought and common sense to come to some reasonable conclusions,” he said.
What to expect in the CWB report
Here are some of the main issues the panel is considering:
- Who should vote? Compiling an accurate voters list has been an issue in each election. Should landlords and other non-farmers be allowed to vote?
- How should votes be cast? Some groups want a weighted ballot, whereby the more business farmers do with the board, the more votes they get, similar to a shareholder-owned corporation. Others say that’s anti-democratic and want to retain a system of one permit book, one vote.
- How should votes be counted? The current system uses a preferential ballot, with the lowest vote-getter dropped off and their votes redistributed, until one candidate claims more than 50 percent of the vote. Some say that’s too complicated and the candidate with the most votes on the first count should be elected.
- When should the vote be held? Some say the current fall campaign comes at one of the busiest times for farmers and should be switched to winter or early spring.
- Who should run the election? Some want Elections Canada or a newly created independent commission to administer the vote, rather than a consultant hired by the CWB.
