Proponents of the Canadian Wheat Board's (CWB) single desk marketing system took their battle to Ottawa last week, embarking on a campaign to set the record straight, says a local farm activist.
Melville farmer Ed Sagan, Saskatchewan coordinator with the National Farmers Union, and about two dozen other representatives from groups including the Wheat Board, and Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board from the Prairie provinces spent three days in the nation's capital.
"The main thrust of going to Ottawa was to educate the news media, the Senate, anybody who would hear us, about the (dangers from) the dismantling of the Wheat Board. It was unbelievable how much misinformation there was about what (federal Agriculture Minister Gerry) Ritz was trying to do." Ritz's and the Conservative government's promise to eliminate the CWB's single-desk monopoly has sparked some of the most bitter debate in decades with proponents of single desk saying it brought better prices to Western Canada's wheat and barley producers.
Opponents of the monopoly, however, say it infringes on producers' freedom to make marketing choices, and that producers could get better prices if they dealt with customers themselves instead of having the CWB determine prices.
The emotional debate has brought about legal action and threats of legal action from both proponents and opponents of single desk, which Minister Ritz has pledged would be eliminated by Aug. 1, 2012.
The government hopes to move from single desk to an open market system over the next five years, something it maintains would benefit producers and something for which it got the green light with its election by a majority last May.
Opponents like the NFU and the Friends of the CWB say that by eliminating single desk, the Conservative government is, in effect, killing the board - the CWB cannot effectively function as a volunteer entity, particularly when it has assets such as terminals or port facilities, says Sagan.
While the debate about single desk has rung loudly across Western Canada, the intensity of the debate hasn't resonated with the media and many politicians in Ottawa, Sagan says.
"In Ottawa it's a little world by itself... This is where we have our difficulties in getting our pro-single desk message out. Our main emphasis on what we want is in a democratic process, all we want is a vote.
"Under Section 47.1 of the CWB Act, when you're adding or dismantling part of the CWB it has to go back to the farmers," says Sagan, adding if farmers got to vote on single desk, it would survive because polls indicate 70 per cent or more of them want to retain single desk. Ritz knows this and that's why Ritz refuses a direct producer vote, instead saying the Conservative majority gives him the mandate to proceed unilaterally, Sagan explains.
As part of the initiative, the representatives were asked to call their MPs. Sagan says he called Yorkton-Melville MP Garry Breitkreuz twice but the calls weren't returned.
A new twist was thrown into the debate, however, when musings were heard to the effect that the Conservative government, intent on gaining admission to the Trans-Pacific Part-ner-ship talks would consider opening Canada's highly protected and politically powerful dairy and poultry supply management sector. Ironically, bargaining any or all of the dairy and poultry supply system would benefit single-desk supporters, Sagan says.
With the supply management system centred largely in Eastern Canada, any significant meddling with it could convince supply managed groups - which have previously sat on the fence - to throw their support behind single desk forces, Sagan says.
"That would probably be the best thing that could happen because until now (the supply managed section) have been silent and the government says 'we've got everybody on board'.
"Technically they don't have anybody on board. They use their own media to the effect they can say anything they want," Sagan concludes.
