Once again, politicians are being treated to the sight of farmers fighting among themselves. The latest display of disunity comes from the elected Advisory Committee to the Canadian Wheat Board.
Six of the committee’s 11 members issued a call for the federal government to withdraw its bill that would change the way the board operates.
The remaining five members, however, put out a minority report arguing that the bill should be passed, with amendments.
The disagreement is about more than tactics. In one sense, it is about whether the federal Liberal government can be trusted to provide long-term support for the board’s monopoly selling powers.
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As it reads now, the bill would give cabinet the right to appoint five out of the proposed 15 CWB directors, as well as the CEO.
The CWB would be able to make cash purchases of grain and issue negotiable trading certificates, while losing its status as a crown agency.
And farmers could be charged an unspecified amount – some say it could be more than $7 a tonne – to create a new CWB contingency fund.
Is all this needed, as the government suggests, to allow the CWB to survive and flourish in the increasingly more open global trading environment? If that is the case, it would support the view that the bill should be passed after correcting various flaws.
Or are the bill’s provisions the first steps toward privatization of the board, withdrawal of its export sales monopoly, and retreat from government-guaranteed initial payments? Such an outcome could earn brownie points in world trade talks, where the Americans are on an ideological crusade against “state trading enterprises.”
If that’s the government’s hidden agenda, it might be better to kill the bill now. A solid majority of farmers have demonstrated confidence in the CWB as their marketing agency and their wishes should be respected.
It would be especially harmful if the board’s powers were changed so that it became little more than another grain company. That would put it into direct competition and conflict with the co-operative grainhandling organizations that have been its strongest supporters. Institutions with a proud history of serving farmers would be at each other’s throats, and one way or another farmers would be the losers.
If the bill proceeds, the government has a clear obligation to address such concerns by clarifying its intentions and making appropriate changes. In several respects, the bill now is almost a blank cheque for future cabinets to do what they like with the board.
