EVEN some of the federal government’s most vociferous and angry critics might grudgingly concede the Conservatives have been creative, decisive and strong-willed in their handling of the barley vote issue.
Of course, they would more likely use less neutral words like manipulative, ideological and pig-headed but still, it is a strong performance against powerful and entrenched critics by a government in a weak political position in Parliament.
However, there also have been errors, missteps and misjudgments in the government’s handling of the issue and none more damaging to the Conservative anti-monopoly crusade than the cavalier way in which they have dealt with the issue of what happens to the Canadian Wheat Board if the monopoly is lost.
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It is the crucial question and the Conservatives have spent precious little time making the case to western farmers that the board need not disappear if it does not have access to captive sellers.
Instead, they have asked farmers to accept on faith that the CWB can morph into a type of co-operative that can continue a pooling system because of farmer loyalty and overseas customer contacts.
Or they have talked absurdly about the 1935-43 period when the board did not have the monopoly, as if there is any connection between market conditions then and now.
Or they have asserted that because the board lost its barley monopoly for 40 days in 1993 and still sold barley, that the case is proven that it could work permanently.
Really? How so?
The “analysis” sent to farmers to make the case for Question 2 is a compilation of assertions rather than a credible analysis.
To make agriculture minister Chuck Strahl’s second and preferred “market choice” option credible, the government should have mustered its evidence of how and where such a marketing entity exists and thrives. If real-life examples do not exist, then at least make the argument in more credible terms than “in a choice environment, the CWB will be a marketing agent for farmers and not a competitor with the grain companies.”
Failure to flesh out their case has given CWB monopoly defenders a free ride to propagate their faith-based arguments that the board cannot become something other than what it is. They have been spared the need to produce their own evidence.
Instead, farmers have been treated to dueling economists with wildly different conclusions, proving only that, like lawyers, economists can muster the evidence and analysis to support almost any point of view.
But the most amazing tactic of the monopoly defenders is to make the argument that Question 2 is a misleading claim that farmers can have market choice and a board single desk together.
In fact, the Conservatives want to end the monopoly. They simply argue the board can exist without the monopoly. Surely farmers understand that.
The Strahl forces have been inept at countering the claim, barely responding when monopoly defenders made a big deal of the fact that Strahl’s task force asserted a monopoly and an open market were incompatible. When did the Conservatives say they were?
That’s what happens when one side in an emotional debate leaves a void around a crucial issue. The other side fills it.
