THE Conservative government has made no secret of its end goal with regard to the future of the Canadian Wheat Board marketing monopoly. It has moved toward elimination of the monopoly with a single-mindedness uncharacteristic of previous governments.
But the flaw in its plan is enormous.
It is proceeding without knowledge about farmer support for a grain marketing world with, or without, the CWB.
Director elections in five districts have just concluded. Single desk and open market candidates ran in each of those districts. Single deskers, those who believe in continuing the board’s marketing monopoly, were elected in four out of five. Farmers have sent their message.
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Will this give the government pause in its drive for change? Given agriculture minister Chuck Strahl’s recent additions to the board and his plan to fire the chief executive officer, it seems unlikely.
How different the palatability of recent developments would be if the government had been working to identify the attributes and pitfalls of a marketing world without the CWB, and then allowing farmers to vote between two clear alternatives. As it is, the situation grows more muddled by the day.
There will be a vote on barley marketing, says the government, but the question to be voted upon hasn’t been determined.
There won’t be a vote on wheat, says the government, because no decision on wheat is being made. But if and when the time comes for a wheat vote, it appears likely that government-effected changes will have made the outcome irrelevant.
Meanwhile, Strahl is replacing members of the CWB board of directors and wondering why the others aren’t embracing his undefined vision of its future.
Changes made to the board in the late 1990s were designed to make it more accountable to farmers.
As we are now discovering, those changes made the board into an unusual and vulnerable beast – run by a mostly elected board of directors but ultimately accountable to government.
Elected directors have fulfilled the mandate afforded them by their electorate. But the muddling ensues when the wishes of their electorate and those of the government are not the same.
Who is the boss? Ultimately, the government is, through its agent, the minister in charge of the CWB. But directors and CWB employees cannot be faulted for carrying out the perceived wishes of a farmer majority.
Since they perceive the monopoly as the key to wheat board value, they’d be wrong to do anything else.
What is the alternative to the CWB, its continued marketing monopoly and changes it says it is prepared to make? The Conservative task force set out to answer that question but it didn’t complete its task.
The best way through the muddle remains: clearly define the alternatives, ask a simple question and allow prairie farmers to vote.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
