Pity poor Ralph. Goodale, that is. Federal minister of agriculture. He held a vote on barley marketing, the wheat board side won and Goodale is honoring the vote.
He can’t do much else, but he’s still getting flak. It seems Goodale can’t win these days, even when he does what a majority of farmers say they want him to do. Think what the outcry would have been like had he gone against the majority.
Farmers voted almost 63 percent to keep barley marketing with the Wheat Board. That’s a substantial victory; governments both federal and provincial have been elected with less.
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Still, as predicted, the vote didn’t solve anything.
Some 37 percent of farmers voted against having barley marketed under the board. What we don’t know is how many farmers voted against the board because they didn’t like the way the question was framed, and how many voted for it because they want the board to stay, but only as part of the marketing equation.
Adding the dual-marketing option into the question for the vote would have been less neat and tidy than a straight yes or no but it might have been more reflective of farmers’ true wishes.
Still, given a majority voting yes, Goodale did the only thing he could have done when he said the board will stay as the sole marketer of export and malting barley.
There was a time, not long past, when the vast majority of farmers saw the wheat board as a definite asset for farmers. They didn’t say much against it. How times change, how fickle fans can be.
Kind of reminds me of our local hockey team. This past weekend, I travelled with the husband and friends to Raymore to watch our team in the SAHA “C” championship final game.
Going in, the teams were even at one win apiece. Our boys were hometown heroes and had more than 200 fans cheering them on. When they lost by two goals, however, the heroes turned to villains who didn’t play hard enough. No one thought to mention that the other side might have been stronger or better or had more desire to win that day. They also had a home-ice advantage.
How quickly a hockey team, like the wheat board, can go from being on top of the pack to somewhere down below.
Someone has to win every game, and nothing is sweeter than winning. Ask Raymore. Ask the wheat board.
