WITH a federal Conservative government sworn into office only days ago, questions about the future of the Canadian Wheat Board are beginning to make waves.
The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, long a board opponent, and GrainVision, an organization formed last year whose members include grain companies, commodity groups and the Alberta government, are vowing to pressure the Conservatives for significant deregulation of the grain industry.
Front and centre among changes they want is the elimination of the wheat board’s monopoly on sales of western grown wheat and malting barley.
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The wheat growers association has suggested the Conservatives could act immediately, without changing legislation, by issuing free export permits to individuals or companies that ask, and by allowing Canadian processors to buy directly from farmers.
Such a move would amount to an end-run around a key tenet of a democratically elected government: that the people who use the system, in this case farmers, should decide.
Suggestions that the Conservatives have a mandate to eliminate the board’s monopoly powers because the party enjoys widespread western rural support ignore the myriad other issues that affected voting, such as western alienation, gun registration and Liberal corruption.
Still, the Conservatives promised to eliminate the monopoly in their election platform so wheat board opponents are likely to find a more sympathetic audience in Ottawa.
However, the government’s minority status will make delivering that promise difficult, if not impossible. The Conservatives must curry favour from opposition parties in the House of Commons to get bills passed. The Liberals and NDP both favour the monopoly.
Given these complications, Saskatchewan Conservative MP Gerry Ritz has said that quick action on the issue is unlikely. His caution is well advised.
As a matter of good practice and in light of international trade pressures, it might be time to review the country’s grain handling system, but fundamental changes should not be made lightly and first require answers to key questions.
How would elimination of the monopoly affect Canada’s wheat system?
Now, the wheat board monopoly is a mechanism to extract a premium for Canada’s grain quality, a status upheld at a cost, paid through adherence to a system that includes variety restrictions, grain cleaning and other regulations.
If the board becomes just another player in an open market, could or should the wider system survive or would it move toward a less regulated, U.S.-style model? Could the CWB operate like AWB Ltd., Australia’s publicly traded grain exporter, which holds a monopoly on wheat exports?
These and other models must be clearly laid out before farmers are asked to make a choice. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it is difficult to get it back in.
