FEDERAL agriculture minister Chuck Strahl’s announcement to hold a farmer plebiscite on whether to remove barley from the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly is a positive step. Now he needs to go further and announce a similar vote for wheat.
Ottawa’s decision to hold a vote on barley appears to be a case of the government tackling the easier issue first and hoping that, if the vote favours removal of barley from the monopoly, the results can be used as a springboard to a similar change for wheat.
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Barley has long had healthy domestic markets not under CWB jurisdiction, and barley growers are generally regarded as more in favour of the open market than wheat producers.
How Strahl decides the makeup of the voters list will prove critical. Because the CWB does not deal in feed barley sold domestically, a vote should include only those producers who grow barley for malting and human food or feed barley for export.
Ottawa has made strategic moves in other areas of the CWB as well. Strahl has been changing the makeup of the board’s government-appointed directors.
Whereas previously appointed directors were selected for desirable business experience, albeit friendly to the government of the day, Strahl’s latest two appointments are different. Although experienced in their own fields, the two newest directors were picked mainly because of their unabashed open market support. Voting around the CWB boardroom table can be expected to turn along the same lines.
The federal government is attempting to shape the direction of the debate. Once the monopoly is eroded from decisions made within the CWB, more farmers may be inclined to see the change as inevitable or view the CWB as irrelevant and vote it out of existence.
Though some might call it good politics, the tactics highlight the broader issue of how politicians of all stripes have learned to shape debates to reach desired outcomes.
In a perfect world, government would want to know what farmers want and then give those wants serious consideration when forming policy. Instead, governments try to convince farmers what they should think.
Whether the CWB maintains its present monopoly is for farmers to decide. That is why Strahl must promise that he will do for wheat what he promises for barley – a vote before any radical changes are made.
The ballot question will then become key. In the recent federal government task force report, which spells out how the CWB could change into an agency that competes in an open market, the so-called dual market is not an option.
The wheat board either retains its present monopoly or a redesigned CWB competes with grain companies in an open market.
There is no middle ground. That is the choice that must be clear in any plebiscite question.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
