It’s official.
Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has announced his new act to give Western Canadian farmers the same marketing choice enjoyed by their Eastern counterparts.
The Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act will ensure that the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) will lose its controlling influence over farmers from B.C. to Manitoba when it comes to selling barley and wheat.
Ritz made a stop at the farm of Acme producer Matt Sawyer to make his announcement, Oct. 17.
“The Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act will give Western Canadian grain farmers the right to choose how they sell their wheat and barley,” said Ritz. “Our government is delivering on our long-standing promise to give Western Canadian grain farmers marketing freedom, just as they have when selling their canola or pulses.”
The Act will take effect next August.
Allen Oberg chairs the CWB’s board of directors and said producers spoke loud and clear about what they want — continuation of its organization.
“Farmers chose the CWB single desk in their 10s of thousands this summer,” he said in reference to a non-binding $275,000 plebiscite that was issued in August. “Farmers chose the people who run the CWB in director elections, and they repeatedly choose farmer-directors who value the single desk.”
Oberg decried the federal Conservative government’s motion and ridiculed the ability of market forces to “uphold our interests.”
“The government is abandoning farmers and betraying the legitimate expectations we all had – when control was passed to us in 1998 – that we had finally won our own grain-marketing agency,” he said.
That’s not how Sawyer sees it, however.
“More than once opportunities were presented (to the CWB) and they knew the open market was a coming and they didn’t plan for it to come,” said Sawyer. “I don’t feel sorry for them at all.”
Sawyer said he was glad his farm was a part of the historic announcement and is looking forward to the choice farmers east of Manitoba already enjoy.
The announcement is also pleasing to the ears of Evan Berger, Alberta’s new agriculture minister.
“I believe it’s their right to sell in alternative markets,” said Berger, Livingstone-Macleod MLA. “I don’t think that it’s a whole lot to be afraid of. There’s more to be gained than lost.”
Berger explained he wasn’t even allowed to vote in the CWB’s plebiscite, despite actively farming 500 acres of land east of Highway 2 near Fort MacLeod.
“I’ve been a farmer since 1979, held a permit book on and off through that, and I wasn’t given a vote in that plebiscite,” he said. “Not having a permit book does not not make me a farmer.”
He also jabbed the CWB and said if everything “was so easy” in Western Canada, he couldn’t understand “why the folks east of the Manitoba border didn’t want in.”
