Canada: Future of CWB draws heated comments on all-party debate as Conservatives pledge to eliminate monopoly on barley sales

The future of the Winnipeg-quartered Canadian Wheat Board drew heated comments on April, 11 during an all-party debate on agriculture in Ottawa, Canadian media report.

The Winnipeg-based agency has been a political football in each of the last three campaigns and this time is proving to be no different.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper first promised to eliminate the boar’s monopoly over Prairie wheat and barley sales in 2004 and has repeated the pledge every election since. In the Conservative platform released April, 8, Harper pledged to eliminate the monopoly on barley sales only.

During the debate on April 11, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz unleashed a torrent against the opposition parties for opposing the move, saying his party only wants to bring equity to farmers across Canada.

Under the Canadian Wheat Board Act, wheat and barley sales in the three Prairie provinces must be made through the CWB, Ritz said that’s unfair because farmers in other provinces can sell their grain directly. He said he doesn’t understand opposition to eliminating the monopoly and told Manitoba NDP candidate Pat Martin to “grow some common sense” on the issue.

Martin accused Ritz of being a “single-minded zealot” on the issue and abandoning the real needs and concerns of farmers in exchange for “carpet-bombing” Prairie ridings with taxpayer-funded letters plotting against the CWB.

“You have spent the bulk of your political career trying to sabotage the Canadian Wheat Board,” Martin told Ritz.

Both Martin and Liberal Wayne Easter took issue with the recent Conservative pledge to continue to fight to protect the supply-management systems protecting Canadian egg, poultry and dairy producers with high import tariffs. Prime Minister Stephen Harper made that promise last week in a campaign stop in Quebec.

But Easter said the Conservatives are double-talking when they pledge to protect supply management and kill the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly at the same time.

“If the Canadian Wheat Board was to go, supply management would not be far behind,” he said.

Harper has never been able to fulfil the CWB promise while in a minority parliament because none of the three opposition parties support it. His first attempt to eliminate the monopoly by cabinet decree was rejected by a court that said only a full vote of Parliament could do so.

Legislation to eliminate the monopoly for barley sales only was introduced in 2008 but never brought forward for debate and died when Harper called the 2008 election.

Conservative backbencher Bruce Stanton introduced a private member’s bill in February that would allow Prairie farmers to opt out of CWB sales for up to two years at a time. It never made it to the floor for debate.

It is an issue the Conservatives will jump on quickly if they win a majority government May 2. What would happen in the event of another minority is unclear. The government never reintroduced the CWB marketing freedom legislation in the last Parliament.

Ritz said he was the only one in the debate who had lived as a Prairie farmer and said nobody else in the debate had any credibility on the subject.

15 April, 2011