Bennett, who had turned 65 the previous day, personally led the debate and chaired the committee that considered the bill.
He had wanted a compulsory board that handled wheat, flax and other grain. Instead, he got a bill that authorized a voluntary board that was limited to handling wheat.
Opposition from the Liberals and the grain trade had forced the Calgary-based prime minister to compromise but still, he had forced through Parliament a bill to create a government-supported competitor to the Winnipeg Grain Exchange and set the foundation for creation of the monopoly in the 1940s and the addition of barley.
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The Bennett government left other agricultural legacies during its five-year term in the depth of the Great Depression, including better bankruptcy protection for farmers, the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration and government-guaranteed farm credit.
However, the CWB turned out to be one of its most enduring legacies.
Richard Bedford Bennett was a most unlikely creator of a collectivist grain-marketing agency.
He was a New Brunswick-born Calgary lawyer and businessperson who represented the Canadian Pacific Railway, made millions of dollars by investing in real estate and a grain elevator company and became the principal owner of the papermaking giant E.B. Eddy Co.
But his faith in capitalism and free markets had been badly shaken during the Depression when prices collapsed and protectionism trumped trade.
He took a personal interest in trying to help revive the wheat economy, in part by negotiating a production reduction agreement with major producing nations at a London conference. The deal collapsed.
Meanwhile, he saw and heard tales of farmer desperation on the Prairies and watched as the Winnipeg Grain Exchange fought farmers’ efforts to create market power by pooling their grain.
According to historians of the grain trade and the wheat board, Bennett’s decision to challenge the grain trade likely was solidified in late 1933 when the Winnipeg Grain Exchange council passed a resolution rejecting calls from the wheat pools for a marketing board by insisting free markets were working and that to tamper with free enterprise would be to jeopardize Canadian grain exports.
Bennett mocked the contention that markets were working.
“I must say that is the strongest argument that has yet been presented to me for the creation of a wheat board at the earliest possible moment,” Bennett wrote in an angry letter to an exchange member, cited by William Morriss in his wheat board history Chosen Instrument.
Work was started on legislation.
In January 1935, with an election looming and Conservative fortunes sagging, Bennett shocked his Conservative followers with a series of radio broadcasts laying out a liberal agenda for change. Agriculture was part of it.
Farmers are captive sellers dependent on prices offered by “unconscionable monopolistic purchasers … middlemen and distributors some of whose activities would properly include them within the classification of economic parasites,” he said.
Bennett biographer Larry Glassford wrote: “Listeners could hardly believe their ears when on Jan. 2, 1935, the prime minister launched his radio attack on the status quo.”
Little more than six months later, the wheat board bill was law.
Three months after that, Bennett’s Conservatives went down to overwhelming defeat to the Liberals of William Lyon Mackenzie King, whose party had watered down the bill. On the Prairies, the count was seven Conservatives and 34 Liberals.
