PUBLICATION:  Citizens Centre Report
DATE:  2003.03.3
PAGE:  22
BYLINE:  Kevin Avram

March 3, 2003 Issue

Open Democracy

Why Ottawa refuses to relinquish control of its western wheat monopoly

by Kevin Avram

At first glance, a column about the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) monopoly tucked into a publication that is entirely devoted to the subject of a refederated Canada may seem odd. It isn’t. The Canadian Wheat Board monopoly is an extension of federal power. Like the National Energy Program, Kyoto protocol and the new rifle registration, its life source is Ottawa.

In reality, the CWB’s core function has nothing to do with wheat. To be sure, agents act on its behalf to collect, transport and sell millions of bushels of wheat and barley, but these handlings are a by-product of its mandate, not the mandate itself.

The objective of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly is to maintain control and enforce dependency. It can thrive only if farmers depend upon it. It can function only when it controls their property. It is a cultural and economic phenomenon that exerts influence in and of itself, and by virtue of the fact that it exists, it casts a collectivist shadow over the entire western region.

The leaders of Canada’s organized left know this to be true, which is why they defend the CWB monopoly with vehemence and passion, even to the point of making false or ridiculous claims about its supposed commercial prowess. They must defend it. It’s their first and biggest domino.

The CWB engenders, nurtures and protects what could be called the Canadian Agricultural Industrial Complex. Like the military-Industrial complex that exists in the United States, the Canadian Agricultural Industrial Complex is very big and very real. It stretches from one end of the country to the other. It includes seaway workers, rank-and-file union members in the grain trade, union bosses, dock workers, longshoremen, CWB bureaucrats, grain companies, and assorted providers that supply services to, and receive payment from, the Canadian Wheat Board.

The only members of the agricultural community outside the Canadian Agricultural Industrial Complex are those who pay the cost of the entire system: western farmers.

Every year, the Canadian Wheat Board washes billions of dollars through its system. After it has sold the farmers’ grain, its own operatives, bureaucrats and consultants are the first to be paid. The money then flows through and satisfies the demands of the many members of the Agricultural Industrial Complex. Whatever happens to be left trickles down to the farmer. Whether wheat prices are high or low has little impact on the Agricultural Industrial Complex.

To put the size and cost of this Agricultural Industrial Complex into context, let us consider there are 576 sections of farmland in a geographic region four townships by four townships; that is to say, 24 miles by 24 miles—the equivalent of 368,000 acres.

Assuming that 75% of the farmland within this region is cropped on an annual basis and that an average yield is 25 bushels per acre, the harvest will be 6,900,000 bushels. According to the CWB’s own Grain Matters publication, the cost to move a single bushel of wheat to port from a mid-prairie point is $2.28 per bushel when it is moving east and $1.70 per bushel when it is moving west.

If you do the math, even using the lower number of $1.70, it means the cost to maintain the Agricultural Industrial Complex for that one small area is at least $11 million per year. Over a ten-year period, that’s more than $100 million—out of one little area of the prairies that is only 24 miles by 24 miles! And the actual grain-growing area of the prairies is almost 1,000 miles wide and 500 miles tall. It is pretty easy to understand why union bosses were popping champagne corks on the day in 1943 that Ottawa created the Wheat Board monopoly. As far as they were concerned, the gravy train had just pulled in to their station.

Though the Agricultural Industrial Complex feeds off western farmers, it is never directly accountable to them. Its various components never have to sit down across the desk from a farmer to negotiate a fee for service. Farmers are pretty much kept in the dark throughout the entire process. They are unable to find out how much the Canadian Wheat Board received from the sale of their wheat. The details of demurrage payments, travel expenses and consultants fees are all secret. The CWB does produce an annual report that provides general summaries in some categories, but details of its financial dealings are impossible to obtain. The Canadian Wheat Board is exempt from the Access to Information Act.

This secrecy extends to CWB directors. Jim Chatenay, an elected director from central Alberta, recently stated that he is unable to obtain a written response to pertinent non-commercially sensitive questions. As he aptly points out, if the people who elected him can’t know what’s going on inside the Wheat Board, how will they ever be in a position to know if they should re-elect him?

Last fall, 13 Alberta farmers went to prison because they moved grain over the U.S. border without the permission of Ottawa’s Wheat Board. On the day these Albertans were handcuffed, shackled and locked behind bars, Ontario farmers were free to blow streams of black smoke out the stacks of their big rigs and pull load after load of Ontario wheat into Ohio, Michigan and New York.

Why should western farmers be sent to prison for something that Ontario farmers do with impunity? Because Ontario, Quebec and the eastern provinces are exempt from the intrusive bullying of an extension of federal power called the Canadian Wheat Board.