It was interesting to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau use his father’s good will with China to beg, on behalf of the Canadian canola industry, to keep sending canola to China with 2.5 per cent dockage. Almost all farmers and most people in the grain industry know the grain companies deliberately add dockage into the canola shipments. This is a real money maker for the grain companies. They deduct the dockage when farmers deliver to their facilities and then add it to the export shipments, thereby essentially double dipping.
When I speak with farmers in my area they indicate that, on average, their dockage runs approximately 1.5 per cent. On an average for a 30,000 tonne shipment, that would equate to at least an additional $136,000 on each shipment for the grain company.
It’s also really quite amazing that a prime minister would lobby a foreign country to accept additional impurities in a product that Canada was exporting!
It was even more astonishing that the prime minister would then appoint the point person from the Canola Council of Canada, who was promoting this crazy trade policy, to a key government regulatory body, the Canadian Grain Commission. But in fact Patti Miller, president of the Canola Council of Canada, was appointed chief grain commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission. Millers’ canola council is an organization with little representation from farmers on its board but with a majority of industry members. She also worked for Cargill. It’s hard to understand how she can lead the grain commission when its legal mandate is to operate “in the best interests of producers!”
But it is less of a surprise when one knows that the previous Harper-appointed head of the grain commission went to Cargill right after his term with the commission ended.
Does this really highlight who the prime minister thinks the grain commission needs to work for?
Eric Sagan
Melville, SK
