When word came that the new chief commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission was about to be announced, I expected a recognizable name. Perhaps it would be a prominent farmer and farm leader or maybe someone with extensive experience in farm policy or someone from the grain trade.
When the name David Hunt was announced, I had never heard of the guy.
Outgoing chief commissioner Doug Chorney is a farmer who had been prominent within Keystone Agricultural Producers in Manitoba. Before that was Patti Miller, a University of Saskatchewan agriculture college graduate who had worked her whole career in the grain industry.
Read Also
Late season rainfall creates concern about Prairie crop quality
Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
You may remember Milt Wakefield as chief commissioner. He was a farmer from Maidstone, Sask., who also served as an MLA.
Even assistant chief commissioners and the number three commissioner have often been notable. Murdoch MacKay was a bundle of energy and someone who got things done.
The current assistant commissioner is Patty Rosher, who worked many years with the Canadian Wheat Board before a stint as executive director of KAP. Her brother farms near Kindersley, Sask.
The other commissioner is Lonny McKague, a producer from Ogema, Sask., with a real passion for the industry.
Hunt, who starts his job later this month, would seem to have a much lower ag community profile than many of his predecessors. His biography notes that he began his career with Richardson International and Puratone Corp., but since there’s no mention of his role, one would have to assume that it didn’t have a lot to do with grain sales and marketing.
Hunt joined Manitoba’s agriculture department in 2007, but his various leadership roles weren’t directly with the grain sector — veterinary diagnostic services, assistant deputy minister for the corporate services and innovation division and most recently assistant deputy minister with the provincial environment department.
In other words, he has been a longtime civil servant with no indication he has much knowledge or experience in the realm of grain sales, grain grading, quality attributes and producer payment security issues. Has he read any of the grain contracts producers are complaining about? Does he understand the desire for a grain export reporting system?
Maybe Hunt is an outstanding individual with abilities that don’t jump off his resume. Hopefully that’s the case because the grain commission is facing lots of challenges and competing interests.
It continues to do outward inspections on grain exports, and this is where it earns most of its money. However, most international grain buyers aren’t interested in the commission’s export certificate and instead get one of the internationally recognized private firms to do the job, duplicating the CGC’s service.
Many in the grain industry say mandatory CGC outward inspection is costly and wasteful. Why not have them only inspect cargoes where the customer wants that service?
However, some farm organizations see the service as some sort of Holy Grail to guarantee Canada’s superior grain quality. Those opposing views need to be reconciled.
The grain commission’s producer payment security system is costly and cumbersome. Canada’s export sales reporting system is inferior to most other nations. There’s no shortage of important issues for a new chief commissioner to address.
Maybe the field of candidates for the commission’s top job wasn’t all that deep. Maybe no one with better credentials applied for the position. Hopefully, that isn’t why Hunt ended up with the job. And hopefully, he’s a quick study.
Kevin Hursh is an agricultural journalist, consultant and farmer. He can be reached by e-mail at kevin@hursh.ca.
