For Your
Information
The
establishment of a board to market grains produced in
For the first 60 years of its existence, the CWB was a Crown Corporation, run by three to five commissioners appointed by the federal government. During this time, the Canadian Wheat Board Act allowed the federal government to add or remove grains from CWB jurisdiction. During the 1970s and 1980s, both feed grains and oats were removed from the board’s mandate through votes in parliament.
During the 1980s and 1990s, western Canadian farmers began putting tremendous pressure on the board to reform. The majority of prairie farmers wanted an organization under their control, but they wanted to keep the CWB because of the market power it gave them in the global economy. A fringe group, Farmers For Justice, was also formed during this time, with the aim of completely dismantling the CWB. They argued that farmers would be better off selling their grain individually to the highest bidder rather than marketing collectively through the CWB. When that argument failed to gain much support, they instead began calling for the creation of a “dual market” – a system in which farmers could choose either to market through the CWB or sell their grain directly to grain companies. The dual market proposal has been debunked by several respected agricultural economists in Western Canada, who have pointed out that the value the CWB brings to farmers in global grain markets is precisely because it is the only seller of western Canadian wheat and grain. Once the monopoly is removed, they argue, the CWB might as well be removed as well.
Responding to these pressures and concerns about the nature and role of the wheat board, the CWB Commissioners held a series of consultations with farmers across Western Canada and proposed a new model for the organization. In 1998, this new model was adopted and a new Canadian Wheat Board Act was introduced. The CWB was transformed from a Crown Corporation into an organization under the control of farmers. A 15-member board of directors was established to oversee the CWB; 10 directors were to be directly elected by farmers, and five directors, including the President and CEO, were to be appointed by the federal government. Farmer directors were elected for four-year terms, with a system of rotating elections – held every two years in five of the districts.
The new legislation enables farmers to change the CWB – by either adding or removing crops from its mandate – in two ways: either through a direct plebiscite of producers or through a majority recommendation of the farmer-controlled board of directors. While the federal government retains the power to appoint directors under the new system, the aim of the act is unambiguous: it is to promote and allow for farmer control of the wheat board. Since 1999, the President and CEO has been selected by farmer directors, who then forward their preferred candidate’s name to Ottawa for formal appointment.
The Harper government is now clearly defying the legislation in both spirit and principle. After firing one of the previously appointed directors (a lawyer with a background in transportation regulation) for defending the CWB’s single-desk system, Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl appointed Ken Motiuk to the board. Motiuk is a well-known anti-CWB advocate, who recently told a parliamentary committee that even if the majority of farmers vote to retain the single desk it should still be abolished. Strahl also appointed Bruce Johnson to fill a vacancy on the board. Johnson is best known to prairie producers for losing millions of dollars of farmers’ money following the privatization of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP) in the 1990s. Johnson, who was the senior financial person hired after SWP incorporated, was fired in 1999. He went on to set up an agricultural processing firm funded by the Saskatchewan government, which went bankrupt within two years.