Conservatives Attempt to Dismantle Canadian Wheat Board

The Harper government is moving full steam-ahead with its plans to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), despite all evidence suggesting the majority of wheat and barley farmers want to retain the board’s monopoly selling powers. Recent polls indicate that if a referendum were held on the subject over 70 percent of the 85,000 wheat and barley farmers in Western Canada the board sells on behalf of would vote to keep the single desk.

“Single desk selling” means the CWB is the only entity that sells western Canadian wheat and barley in the international market and the only seller of all wheat and barley for human consumption domestically. This enables farmers to fetch premium prices for their high quality wheat in a marketplace increasingly dominated by a few big players. All revenue from the sale of their grain is returned to farmers, minus the CWB’s operating costs. The majority of farmers’ grain sold in the world is handled by a handful of American or European-based multinational corporations – Louis Dreyfus, Cargill, Bunge, Con Agra and a few others. Their aim is to make maximum profits by buying grain from farmers at the lowest price and selling it on the world market at the highest price.

Besides strong support for the CWB monopoly, polls also indicate that an overwhelming majority of farmers believes that they should be the ones to determine any changes to the way the CWB operates, not the federal government.

The Canadian Wheat Board Act currently stipulates that a plebiscite is required for any substantive changes in the CWB’s operations to take place. This clause was introduced in the act in 1996, at the same time that the CWB was transformed from a crown corporation into a farmer-controlled marketing body. The CWB is now led by a 15-member board of directors, ten of whom are directly elected by farmers and five of whom are appointed by the federal government. Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl, and David Anderson, his parliamentary secretary, have both repeatedly refused to answer in the House of Commons when asked if they would hold a referendum before abolishing the CWB’s monopoly. Outside the House of Commons, they have argued that the majority of farmers voted for the Conservatives in the last federal election, which gives the party a mandate to fundamentally change the CWB.

Over the past four months, the Conservatives have released a policy paper calling for the creation of an “open market”, under which the CWB would continue to exist but without its monopoly on wheat and barley sales. The Conservatives have set up an advisory committee which is expected to release a report on how this can be achieved sometime before the end of the year. This committee is headed by a senior Agriculture Canada bureaucrat and contains representatives of major grain companies and the transportation industry along with a handful of farmers selected specifically because of their long-standing opposition to the CWB. When invited to be part of this committee the CWB, refused, pointing out that without the advantage of being the only seller of western Canadian wheat and barley, there would be little point for its existence.

In September, Strahl appointed Ken Motiuk – a vocal opponent of the CWB monopoly who had led an unsuccessful campaign to have the board dissolved in the mid-90s – to the vacant position on the CWB board of directors. Motiuk was appointed to the position on the board that had traditionally been set aside for someone with expertise in international trade law. Just last week, Strahl issued a directive barring the CWB from spending any money to communicate with farmers around the issue of the board’s future, an announcement which was greeted with outrage by many farmers and farm organizations. In making the announcement Strahl said that the CWB is accountable to parliament through him and is not accountable directly to farmers.

In the mid-90s, the same groups currently leading the charge to dismantle the CWB, including the railways, representatives of large agri-businesses and the Alberta provincial government, were confident they were close to dismantling the board. In 1996 they lobbied for and got a plebiscite on whether the board should retain its monopoly on barley sales, believing that losing barley would mean the beginning of the end for the CWB. Their hopes were dashed, however, when 70 percent of farmers voted to keep the board’s single-desk for barley. This includes 67 percent of Alberta barley farmers, despite the millions of dollars the Alberta government spent telling farmers they would make more money marketing in the world market as individuals rather than as a collective.

Now iremains to be seen whether or not the Conservatives will be able to dismantle the CWB without a plebiscite. In the last month, an organization called Farmers for Real Choice has begun campaigning actively for a plebiscite. The group is currently investigating the possibility of suing the government for lost revenues if the Conservatives are successful in their attempt to dismantle the CWB.

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