What percentage of farmer votes should be required in any future referendum to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly?
Is 50 percent plus one enough? Should two-thirds be required?
It is a question politicians and farmers will have to decide in the near future as legislation makes its way through Parliament this winter to change the board, and to set the rules for future farmer votes on board jurisdiction.
At the core of the debate is a fundamental question. In Canada, is everyone’s vote equal? In theory, yes. In practice, absolutely not.
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A vote in rural Canada, for example, has more clout than a vote in urban Canada. Smaller rural voters lists mean it takes fewer supporters to elect a rural politician than an urban counterpart.
Consider the north. This year, just 4,000 votes were necessary to elect a Yukon MP, compared to tens of thousands in many urban ridings.
And of course, all voters also are not equal in Quebec when it comes to independence votes.
Ottawa says a simple majority for separation will not be enough to trigger negotiations. It will require a larger, still-unspecified, “Yes” vote to be taken seriously.
In that scenario, the votes of federalist Quebeckers clearly are worth more than those who want to leave.
However, merely noting that all voters are not equal does not make it fair or just.
Perhaps a better question is: should all votes be equal? That is a much more difficult proposition.
If a vote result can be overturned by a simple follow-up vote the next year, then a simple majority seems reasonable. The issue can always be tackled again.
But if the effect of a vote is more or less irreversible, such as the break-up of a country, then there is logic to making the threshold higher.
All of which leads back to the debate over how many votes it should take to end the wheat board export monopoly, or the marketing monopoly held by the Ontario Wheat Producers’ Marketing Board.
In Ontario, the votes of farmers who oppose the board are twice as valuable as the votes of those who want to preserve it. If just one-third of farmers plus one vote against the board, its monopoly will be dismantled.
Under free-trade rules, it is questionable if it could be re-established after a future, different vote result.
On the prairies this year, then-agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said he would take barley from the board if 50 percent plus one voted to end the barley monopoly. That probably reflected the fact he did not expect to lose. But what of future votes? Here, political reality means more than democratic theory.
Suppose politicians and farm leaders try to set a higher threshold than 50 percent plus one to dismantle board control. It would be irrelevant.
Practical politics will dictate that if the question is clear and the implications of a “yes” vote fairly debated, a simple majority will have to be honored, either way.
A law which bound a majority to sell their grain in a way that only the minority supports would not be enforceable.
