Western Producer staff
In Alberta agriculture circles, the right wing anti-wheat-pool warriors are smiling. Alberta Wheat Pool, once the dominant grain sector voice in the province, has decided to muzzle itself.
Instead of trying to be a regular, influential player in the general farm policy debate, it will concentrate on taking care of business. Only on issues that directly affect the company’s viability will president Alex Graham feel free to speak for the members.
There is a political and economic logic to the pool decision to go low-profile.
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It no longer can be sure that its traditional views enjoy the loyalty of its members. As it found out during the debate over continental barley marketing, a controversial political stand can drive business away at the elevators.
Besides, in the present political environment in which the Alberta government is one of the leading proponents of deregulation, open markets and change, Alberta Pool views were having little impact anyway.
So why bother risking controversy when there is so little chance of pay-back through influence or business?
Still, the Alberta Pool decision to stifle itself diminishes the debate in Alberta.
At a time when many of the policy controversies that have dominated the past two decades are coming to a head, free- market spokesmen from the commodity and livestock groups dominate the stage.
On issues from Canadian Wheat Board powers and marketing to Canadian Grain Commission regulations and safety nets, the pool has traditionally held views at odds with the current Alberta conventional wisdom that regulation, intervention and government support is bad.
To the partisans in the commodity groups, it is a sure sign that their get-government-out-of-the-way market philosophy has won the day.
“I think it reflects the reality of Alberta that the right-wing groups have prospered and the left-wing groups have declined,” said Tim Harvie, chair of the Alberta Barley Commission.
A senior Alberta government official agreed. The fact that the pool is no longer willing to risk a backlash if it voices pro-regulation opinions “probably shows that view has become irrelevant in Alberta,” he said.
The decline of Unifarm and the lack of access afforded the National Farmers Union reinforces the point.
So does this mean the end of the agriculture policy debate in Alberta, now that one side of the debate has melted like Calgary snow drifts in a chinook?
For Mel LeRohl, long-time policy watcher from his perch at the University of Alberta, it means that any semblance of a debate over farm policy directions will have to be played out on a higher political plane. “I think it probably means the debate concentrates in the political sphere and less among farm groups,” he said. “It will be a clash of visions between Conservatives and Liberals in the Legislature.”
But without a visible “clash of visions” among farmers, will any Opposition politician be willing for long to challenge the direction of the government and its free-enterprise supporters?
Why bother?
