IF THE latest Ipsos-Reid farmer opinion survey on the future of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly is to be believed, it all comes down to the question asked.
More wheat producers will support the board monopoly if they think the alternative is a return to the free market, multinational companies versus individual farmers.
More will support an end to the CWB monopoly if they believe the board somehow can exist in a competitive market as a co-operative-like alternative marketer of grain if the private companies are not offering reasonable prices.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
Producers think differently about their barley. Growers appear to have left the board in spirit and ideology, if not yet in law.
But farmers put their wheat in another class. They are disaffected with the board and looking for options but not really ready to abandon the CWB entirely.
There is nothing surprising about this finding. Who wouldn’t like to have security plus options?
It is interesting how much the wheat board monopoly debate revolves around the question asked, and how that should determine the strategies of the warring pro and anti-board forces.
Election planners and political pollsters have long argued that election results do not usually revolve around leader images or even ideology or party.
Election results are determined by the question voters think they are answering.
In 1980, the Republican campaign in the United States asked voters if they felt better off than they felt four years earlier. The answer sunk president Jimmy Carter.
In 2004, the Liberals in Canada successfully salvaged a minority government from the possibility of defeat by asking voters east of Manitoba to judge whether the Conservatives could be trusted to be mainstream, tolerant and respectful of the Charter of Rights. Fair or not, Liberal campaign ads and Conservative gaffes created the question that got voters away from judging the Liberals based on their anger.
So the latest poll makes the task for the warring sides in the wheat board debate clear. Never mind arcane arguments about whether the board snags a small premium in the market or not, since opponents won’t accept that anyway.
Wheat board defenders should concentrate their arguments and analysis on explaining why a dual market will not work and why the CWB as a marketer without infrastructure and without a guaranteed supply of product would not be effective.
Simply arguing that a dual market would not work is not good enough.
Evidence please.
Similarly, the anti-monopoly forces must present credible arguments and analysis to prove that the board could be a market player without the monopoly, that wheat farmers would not be abandoning the devil they know for the devil they don’t.
Evidence please.
In 1997, then agriculture minister Ralph Goodale engineered a plebiscite win for the wheat board among barley producers by refusing to allow a dual market question. It was the wheat board monopoly or the unknown of open markets. Almost two-thirds were afraid of the unknown.
The debate now revolves around whether the dual market is credible or not.
Ipsos-Reid indicates that the future of the board monopoly, at least until the World Trade Organization has its say, could depend on the answer.
