Larry Hill says...

[tipsy]

Nothing annoys me more than when one of the 8 arrogant single desk moron's publicly runs around stomping their feet demanding that farmers have to control and direct the cwb. Then when direction is clearly given to them they undemocratically continue to deny that direction. Where was that right or direction when the organic industry was exp-orated? The malt producer's have indicated for a number of years that they want volantary marketing choices. The board of directors choice to ignore the democratic direction,instead created some half whit-ted program called cash plus,that no-one was or is interested in anyways. If the board of directors does not want to provide prairie farmers choices and options they clearly ask for, then, is it not time and the duty for the feds to stand up and take charge?

[Raven]

Cropduster, Good point, we can only have farmer control when we have marketing freedom.

tipsy, the CWB will not give farmers marketing freedom. The Conservatives have a policy of marketing choice.
The courts show how it can be accomplished by government order. I agree that it is time for the feds to take charge and give us marketing freedom.

[parsley]

Over 15% (35,467) of the 229,373 farms counted in the 2006 Census of Agriculture had their headquarters in one of Canada's 33 CMAs. (Census Metropolitan Areas)

How many do you suppose, have CWB permit books and voted in CWB elections? Pars

[Fransisco]

<b>For Harper, silence is golden at Wheat Board</b>

Court sides with Prime Minister on 'gag order'

Kevin Libin, National Post Published: Tuesday, February 02, 2010



Stephen Harper has managed to silence one of the most vocal and activist groups battling against his plan to give prairie farmers the right to opt out of selling their wheat and barley through the wheat board. Namely, the Canadian Wheat Board itself.

The board's directors had, since the Tories' election, been running a relentless campaign to protect their "single-desk" marketing monopoly. They regularly funded studies and surveys that invariably concluded the CWB's model was the most profitable, most popular manner for grain marketing; when Ottawa held a plebiscite in 2007 that resulted in a majority of barley farmers voting for marketing choice, the directors launched a publicity campaign undermining it as rigged and irrelevant; they urged farmers to write the agriculture minister in protest.

That may have all stopped, permanently, after the Supreme Court on Jan. 22 declined to hear an appeal from the board that challenged an order from the government requiring it to stop using members' money to fight political battles. The board's directors had initially succeeded in getting a federal judge to find what it called a "gag order" to be illegal and unconstitutional. An appeals court later ruled that to be a mistake. With the directors' last resort, the Supreme Court, declining to intervene, the appeals ruling stands.

"I think it ends here," says Wheat Board chairman Larry Hill. "Certainly, I think the board of directors is disappointed that we cannot proceed with the appeal. And that's based on the principle of farmer control. As elected representatives, we think that the elected and appointed board should make the decisions as to how the CWB operates, not the government. And I think farmers think the same thing."

The debate around the future of the Canadian Wheat Board has rarely had much civility. Or perspective. The "Save My CWB" website, operated by opponents of the Harper government's promise to end the agency's monopoly over Western wheat and barley sales, urges readers to "report rats" -- businesses and politicians supporting the government's reform efforts, and posts their photos online.

Government appointees to the board are called out as "saboteurs." Ralph Goodale, the Saskatchewan Liberal MP and fierce defender of the Wheat Board's status quo, has blasted the Tories' deregulatory manoeuvres as "thuggish"; his former leader, Stephane Dion, accused the Prime Minister of spying on his Wheat Board opponents, part of "an assault more brutal than anything we've seen before."

Mr. Hill says that Mr. Goodale, then the agriculture minister, told the directors explicitly that his government's amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board Act were intended to "pass direction onto the elected and appointed board," Mr. Hill says. It was an apparent response to growing Western fury over the board's authoritative control over the livelihood of prairie producers (growers east of Manitoba are exempt from the act).

It now appears to have been mere political window dressing: The amendments arguably gave Ottawa more, not less, control, adding language the judges say "was intended to provide the governor in council with the authority to direct the Wheat Board on any matter of governance in the event of a disagreement with the board of directors."

Any check against irresponsible directives, the judges ruled, would not come from board directors, but from political means: If Parliament or voters didn't like how the government was running things, they could deal with it their own way.

"The reason why that's a good decision is because we still have a parliamentary democracy rather than complete bureaucratic control over the lives of western farmers and I think that's extremely important," says Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary political scientist.

To date, the Tories have ordered the directors only to cease and desist from their campaign promoting the single-desk monopoly. Possibly the government could order the directors to promote marketing choice. Or perhaps to stop directors from launching legal challenges against Conservative efforts to deregulate, as they did in 2007 when they convinced a judge to overturn a Cabinet order that would have given western barley producers the ability to sell outside the board.

At the very least, suggests Doug Robertson, president of the Grain Growers of Canada -- a pro-reform group -- putting an end to the CWB's political advocacy could put more farmers' opinions in play, possibly leading to changes in the complexion of the board itself. Currently the single-desk directors outnumber the marketing-choice directors by just one. "The board has been extremely good at getting their side across and the rest of us aren't as good at it and don't have access to the same resources," he says. "We don't have farmers' money to do it."

Whatever deregulatory levers are available to them, expect the Tories to use them to the maximum extent: Mr. Harper first came to Ottawa promising an end to the Wheat Board's monopoly and has only vowed steadfastness in that mission following a number of subsequent setbacks. This, his first tangible victory on the file, can only re-energize the Tories' resolve.

They will still need it: With the Wheat Board's opposition dispatched, the Tories must now find support from Parliament to proceed with any changes to the way the board operates. The Prime Minister will likely find no support from the NDP or the Bloc, who were convinced to see any deregulation as a threat to their own supply-managed agricultural industries.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has made conciliatory sounds toward westerners since becoming leader; farmers will be watching to see whether he, now, will choose to make himself the last real hurdle to ending the Wheat Board's monopoly.