IN THE 15 years since a Conservative government last tried to get barley out of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, much has changed in the political landscape that surrounds this issue. The most startling development is how few independent industry allies the board has this time.
It may be, as Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board will tell you, that the majority of farmers remain on the side of the CWB but the fact remains that the organization carrying the heaviest burden of defending the monopoly is the wheat board itself.
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And of course, its arguments can be construed as self-serving. Its opponents can claim that the board is defending itself using money raised from farmers who do not want to be under its jurisdiction.
Since 1998, the board can claim to directly represent farmers through director elections but the optics of being your own most prominent defender are never good.
The board could use a few high profile defenders. None are on the horizon.
While Friends of the CWB claim to speak for most farmers, it is impossible to know exactly how many do support the pro-board campaign. They certainly have not been supporting it with cash since the Friends have been financed largely by NDP governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, although Saskatchewan’s new conservative government has ended its support.
The National Farmers Union remains a stalwart defender of the CWB but its profile consistently exceeds its membership list.
Contrast that with 15 years ago.
It was 1993 and Conservative agriculture minister Charlie Mayer was proposing to remove barley from the CWB monopoly by changing regulations.
Opposition to the move was immediate, powerful and ultimately successful.
The three prairie wheat pools opposed the decision to end the monopoly. The NFU organized rallies.
In the House of Commons, 17 prairie opposition MPs stood against the move, many of them rural New Democrat MPs who represented farmers.
Today, the pools are gone and farmer-controlled grain handling co-operatives live only in the history books. The grain-handling sector generally opposes the monopoly or at least offers no defence.
Even the general farm organizations are more or less silent this time, calling on the federal government to let farmers decide but not explicitly embracing the CWB.
In 1993, the prairie pools were the largest contributors to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the CFA was in the wheat board camp. This year, even though the CWB is a CFA member, the federation has not been prominent in the debate.
Presidents of the prairie provincial farm umbrella groups say they understand their membership is divided on the issue so forcing members to approve a stand on the issue of the monopoly would be divisive.
And in the House of Commons, only seven opposition MPs represent prairie ridings and as the government never ceases to note, none of them represent substantial numbers of farmers who live the wheat board issue. The strongest opponents of the government policy are MPs representing downtown Winnipeg and rural Prince Edward Island.
The board has some vocal political and farm supporters but little independent organizational support.
It helps the Conservative cause.
