With the political off-season looming when bureaucrats typically get to relax a bit, two groups of officials will not have the luxury of a laid back summer this year.
At Agriculture Canada, a cadre of bureaucrats will be working long hours to devise a new Canadian law that eliminates the Canadian Wheat Board Act and ends the CWB single desk while setting out rules and conditions the government insists can make the board a viable voluntary grain marketer.
The assignment is to have legislation ready to present when Parliament returns in late September. To get the legislative work done to implement the new rules Aug. 1, 2012, there will not be a day to lose.
Read Also
Determining tariff compensation will be difficult but necessary
Prime minister Mark Carney says his government will support canola farmers, yet estimating the loss and paying compensation in an equitable fashion will be no easy task, but it can be done.
In Winnipeg, meanwhile, CWB bureaucrats under the direction of the pro-monopoly board of directors’ majority will be working to devise some advice to government on what the new CWB would need while mainly concentrating on opposing the Conservative plan.
In Ottawa, opposition political staff will have to work long hours to find ways for the MPs to try to organize a popular revolt against Conservative plans to abolish the 78-year-old monopoly without a farmer vote.
Last week, the early outline of the looming political battle emerged.
While the Conservatives won the political battle May 2 by getting a majority government with overwhelming prairie rural support despite (or because of?) the vow to end the monopoly, opponents signalled that they will fight on the issue of giving affected farmers a vote.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz has asked the board to co-operate in giving him suggestions on what tools the board needs to survive as a voluntary marketer.
Last week in Regina, board chair Allen Oberg essentially offered his defiant answer. Proposals will be made, but the minister and the government are wrong, he said.
For the CWB, it appears to be an all-or- nothing game – they will survive only if the government backs down – so go for broke. Challenge the minister, criticize him and promote an online petition demanding a vote.
It is difficult to imagine the Conservatives backing down after two decades of promising this, and anti-monopoly CWB director Jeff Nielsen thinks there is a downside to the board defiance. He figures the government has won the political war and the only CWB option is to try to get the best deal possible through rules that give it a fighting chance.
Ritz is a politician who does not like resistance. Nielsen says his “biggest fear” is that the minister will decide that if the board does not want to cooperate, it will be cut out of the rule making process, making their “we can’t survive” mantra a self-fulfilling prophesy.
In Parliament last week, New Democrats and Liberals demanded a farmer vote as required by the Canadian Wheat Board Act, but their demands were brushed off.
So in the early going, the Conservatives have shown their parliamentary majority will let this happen. The CWB majority has decided to go down fighting.
The ground war will be waged this summer as farmer opponents and their lawyers figure out if there is a way to thwart Ottawa.
When it moves back to the parliamentary stage in the autumn, the answer should be clear.
Right now, the government seems to hold the cards.
