In the battle for public opinion over the pros and cons of the Canadian Wheat Board, the anti-Board side would be well advised to rein in its fringe.
It does nothing for their credibility to have a prominent self-proclaimed spokesperson crossing the line from conviction, to obsession, to ridiculous.
The issue is Ken Diller’s Jan. 19 letter, on behalf of Farmers for Justice, to U.S. president Bill Clinton, apologizing for the Board. Diller had read a report that a former Canadian spy claimed secret interception of American embassy telephone conversations in 1982 helped the Canadian Wheat Board steal from the Americans a $3.5 billion wheat sale to China.
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For more than two years, Mike Frost, a former employee of the defence department’s highly-secret Communications Security Establishment, has been promoting a claim made in his book SpyWorld that CSE employees accidentally overheard an American embassy conversation about U.S. negotiations with China.
Information on the American offer, including price, was passed on to the Board, says Frost.
There are reasons to at least question Frost’s sensational claim.
But Saskatchewan farmer Diller read the story in a local daily newspaper and assumed the worst.
He quickly wrote “an open apology to the American people,” which he says he faxed to U.S. president Bill Clinton Jan. 19, the day before Clinton’s inauguration.
Presumably, some lowly White House worker found it and stuffed it in the “Martians Land in New Jersey” file.
Still, Diller’s fax now is part of the public record. It is embarrassing.
He said he was humiliated that Canada would be so underhanded in competition with U.S. farmers.
It was “an example of all that is evil in state trading enterprises.” The Wheat Board “dumped” wheat into China to undersell the Americans.
As a proud former American, Diller wanted Clinton to know he is sorry and embarrassed. He should be, for exposing Farmers for Justice to ridicule.
Conspiracy theories aside, he might have done a bit of research on Frost’s claim before running off in all directions.
There are reasons to question the story of a Wheat Board-CSE partnership.
When the story was first published in 1994, Jim Leibfried had a chuckle. He was a Wheat Board commissioner in 1982 when the Chinese negotiation happened and it was news to him.
He asked some questions. The Americans had signed a four-year deal with the Chinese the previous year. Why would they be negotiating a new deal?
The three-year agreement with China did not include price commitments and was eventually worth about $2.25 billion, not the $3.5 billion Frost claimed. How could the Board have offered cut-rate prices when price was not part of long-term agreements?
Finally, Diller asserts the Board “dumped” wheat into China, meaning the Board sold at less than cost. A pool deficit would logically have occurred. It did not.
For the sake of credibility, Farmers for Justice should be careful with the allegations they throw around. Occasionally, they might be taken seriously.
