Farmers Rally Around the Canadian Wheat Board
On December 14,
over 1,000 farmers rallied in front of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) offices
in downtown
Carrying placards that read “Our board, our business”, “Chuck Strahl, not Measner” and “Keep your hands off my board”, farmers converged at the CWB head office in the early afternoon. Butch Harder, a Manitoba producer and a former farmer-elected director of the CWB, was the first speaker. He urged farmers to stand united to defend the CWB, a marketing organization that empowers prairie producers in a global grain market dominated by five multinationals. Without the CWB, he noted, the only “choice” prairie grain growers would have is to which of those five multinationals they would turn over their grain. These companies, he continued, make profits for their shareholders by buying grain as cheaply as possible and selling it for as much as possible. The CWB, on the other hand, has only one objective – selling farmers’ grain at the highest possible price within any market and returning that money to farmers.
Larry Bohdanovich, of Grandview, Manitoba then took over from Harder and spoke. Bohdanovich is a co-chairperson of Real Voice for Choice, the group that organized the rally. Real Voice for Choice was established in Saskatoon in September as it became clear that the Harper government had set its sites on dismantling the CWB’s single-desk. The organization has involved thousands of farmers from across the Prairies in actions aimed at defending the CWB, including rallies, farmer meetings and letter-writing campaigns. The group is also targeting Conservative members of parliament, especially those who have said in the past they support farmers’ right to determine the future of the CWB.
Bohdanovich noted that in 1998 the CWB was transformed from a Crown Corporation into a farmer-controlled organization, with 10 of the 15 members of the board of directors elected by farmers. The remaining five directors are appointed by the federal government, including the President and CEO, although it is the farmer directors who actually select the President and CEO. Director elections were just held for five of the 10 farmer districts, he continued, with the highest voter turnout since the election process began. Farmers overwhelmingly voted for candidates who supported the single-desk. Bohdanovich then invited the two farmer-elected directors from Manitoba, Bill Toews and Bill Nicholson, to come forward and presented them, on behalf of the farmers of Western Canada, with the key to the CWB. “This is our organization”, he told the cheering crowd. “We are the ones that should determine its future.”
Bohdanovich went on to list the actions taken by Chuck Strahl and the Harper government regarding the CWB over the past few months. These include firing an appointed director who refused to renounce single-desk selling without consulting the farmer-elected chair of the board, threatening to fire Measner and trying to gag all CWB employees.
After brief remarks from the two elected directors, the crowd began chanting “We Want Measner! We Want Measner!” To great applause, Adrian Measner made his way to the front of the crowd, where he was joined by all the members of the Baker family, a young farm family from the Beausejour area. Susan Baker thanked Measner for his over 30 years of service to western Canadian farmers as an employee of the CWB and presented him with a basket of bread, pasta and beer made from Prairie wheat and barley. Her husband Andy presented Measner with a shovel, engraved with a message urging the staff at the CWB to shovel out Chuck Strahl, Stephen Harper or any politicians who tried to interfere in the board’s operations.
Measner thanked
the Bakers and all the farmers present.
He also, on behalf of the CWB staff, thanked the tens of thousands of
Prairie farmers who have sent messages of support and publicly opposed the
Harper government’s attempts to destroy the board. Measner pointed out that the real issue was
not whether or not he keeps his job but, rather, who should determine the
future of grain farming on the prairies – farmers or politicians? He expressed regret that Chuck Strahl has
refused repeated attempts by both the board and staff of the CWB to meet to
discuss pressing issues. He then
confirmed to the crowd that he would not back down from his principled defence
of single-desk marketing. He had replied
to Chuck Strahl’s ultimatum just before joining the rally, he said. “Based on my 32 years of experience, and based on the direction given to
me by the farmer-elected board of directors, I will continue to support the
single desk [model of selling]," he told the crowd, which erupted into
wild cheers.
The rally ended with CWB staff handing
out cookies and coffee they had donated as a thank-you to farmers for their
support.