In 1918, women in Canada won the right to vote in federal elections.
Eighty years later, some farm women are unhappy they don’t automatically have the right to vote in the Canadian Wheat Board election.
“I was really shocked when I discovered I was not going to get a ballot,” said Noreen Johns, who farms with her husband in Zelma, Sask., and is active in the Saskatchewan Women’s Agricultural Network.
She and her husband are both named on a single permit book and, as a result, they received just one ballot.
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“We have been fighting for recognition of women’s contribution on the farm,” she said. “This is almost pre-Nellie McClung, to think we’ve come up against a barrier against being able to vote.”
While Johns and her husband discussed how to cast that vote, she thinks a system should be introduced for the next election that allows both members of a farm couple to vote.
“When I think of the effort I put into this farm and the ownership I have, and realize that all my landlords get a vote, some owning just a quarter or two quarters, I’m really alarmed,” she said.
National Farmers Union president Nettie Wiebe is in a similar situation. She and husband Jim Robbins, a candidate in district four, received only one ballot.
“Right now, one of us doesn’t have a vote,” she said Nov. 16, adding she has been trying to obtain a second ballot on the basis that their farm is a legal partnership.
Both Johns and Wiebe said they fear that prairie farm women have been disenfranchised by the system of providing one ballot per permit book.
“My guess is that the vast majority of those ballots will be filled out by men,” said Wiebe, noting that few women have attended candidate meetings.
Ideally a husband and wife will discuss the candidates and agree on how to vote, but that won’t always be the case, especially in more traditional households and among older couples, said Colleen Bianchi, a candidate in district three. She and her husband each have a permit book, so both received ballots.
A spokesperson for election co-ordinator KPMG said there have been few inquiries or complaints about spouses not being able to cast separate votes.
However Roger Buxton, who farms at Consort, Alta., said he thinks women should be able to get a ballot if they make an official declaration they are involved in the management of the farm and earn money and pay income tax from the business.
CWB spokesperson Deanna Allen rejected the assumption that men will fill out most of the jointly held ballots, adding that is an issue to be settled between the couple, not by the board or the election co-ordinator.
Spousal ballots are among the voters list-related issues that the newly elected board of directors may choose to deal with, said Allen.
