The chair of the Ontario Flour Millers’ Association has a blunt message
for prairie grain industry players considering whether the Canadian
Wheat Board should organize a trial open or dual market: “It doesn’t
work.”
Howard Rowley, president of Dover Flour Mills of Cambridge, Ont., said
in an interview June 17 that Ontario’s experience during the past
several years of dual marketing has been a disaster.
The province’s millers, who buy half or more of the provincial soft
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white wheat crop every year, are asking that either the Ontario Wheat
Board resume single desk marketing powers it gave up in the late 1990s,
or be abolished.
“The dual system is dysfunctional,” he said. “Millers are having a
difficult time accessing grain. If we go through the board, we pay
them, but then have to find the grain through brokers or directly to
farmers. When brokers know you are looking for grain, stocks suddenly
become tight and the price goes up.”
The Ontario dual market often is cited by Canadian Alliance MPs who
argue that prairie grain farmers should have the same market options as
their Ontario counterparts.
When Ontario Liberals heard Canadian Wheat Board defenders argue that a
dual market would ultimately lead to the demise of the board, they made
some inquiries.
Word went out that agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief was assuring them
the dual system has been working. On June 14, he repeated it outside
Parliament.
“The Ontario Wheat Board model has been working in the province of
Ontario,” he said, while refusing to say if he thought it would work on
the Prairies.
“That is a decision that the wheat board directors in Western Canada
would have to make on behalf of their producers. Obviously it works
here in Ontario.”
Rowley said that is an illusion and farmers increasingly are talking
about getting rid of the board.
“My advice to the West certainly would be not to do it,” he said. “It
would cause a lot of problems.”
