Western Producer staff
There was irony in the fact that on the day the membership of the Canada-U.S. joint commission on grain was announced in Ottawa and Washington, U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy announced his intention to resign.
He is being hounded from office over allegations that he accepted inappropriate gifts from U.S. food companies.
Critics immediately said his tenure as agriculture secretary will not be remembered as a period of high accomplishment for U.S. agricultural interests.
The irony is that the commission may turn out to be Espy’s main victory on the Canada file.
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The study of the two grain systems is touted by the Canadian government and many industry leaders as a Canadian victory, a chance for Canada to expose all the evils and hypocrisy of the American subsidy system.
Somehow, this exposure is going to help convince the Americans of the error of their ways, goes the Canadian thinking. The export subsidy program will be cut back and attention will shift from the Canadian Wheat Board.
Well, maybe, but it also is a great gamble for Canada and the board.
It is just as likely that the “blue ribbon commission” will recommend an end to the wheat board monopoly on sales south as one way to ease cross-border tensions.
This is true for several reasons.
One is a comparison of the grain lobbies of the two countries.
The Canadian grain sector and grain producers clearly are divided over how best to market their product.
The wheat board monopoly has its army of defenders. It may be smaller (or maybe not), but the open-market option also has its loud advocates.
Meanwhile, the American industry tends to show a relatively unified face to the world. “I think we are fairly united in this country because growers do their own marketing and there are not the two systems like in Canada,” Judy Olson, president of the U.S. National Association of Wheat Growers.
It is an assertion that has the feel of truth to it.
This surely will affect the commissioners, who will hear conflicting advice from Canadians and relatively uniform advice from American farmers.
The American commissioners cannot help but note the Canadian divisions in their final report.
And even among the Canadian commissioners, at least one (co-chair Bill Miner) is on record as believing that the wheat board monopoly on sales south cannot be maintained indefinitely.
What happens if the final report, or reports, from the commission next June agree with Miner that a single-desk monopoly seller in a free-trade zone is not sustainable in the long term?
The government can ignore it, of course. But there is no doubt it would add weight to the anti-board lobbyists.
And the government could use the external pressure as an excuse to change a piece of domestic policy it wants to change anyway.
At best, the blue-ribbon commission is a calculated gamble for Canada. It may be Espy’s revenge.
