Rewriting wheat board history is taking things way too far

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Politicians in the past who tried to kill the board paid the price. (CP)

It's one thing for a government to make and change policy. After all, it's what governments are elected to do.

It's quite another to use a policy debate to try to rewrite history and co-opt the public service into a propaganda machine in a bid to sell a particular ideology.

Both are true of the federal government's ongoing efforts to ram through its desired changes to grain marketing in Western Canada.

The "did you know?" section of a new marketing freedom website housed with the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada website offers up some rather convoluted statistical spin.

For example: "Did you know... that over the past 25 years, the share of area seeded by CWB grains in Western Canada decreased from 78 per cent to 48 per cent, while the share of area seeded to canola increased by 195 per cent?"

Shouldn't we be comparing apples to apples? A decline in percentage points -- as in total acres -- is not the same as a percentage increase. Canola could have gone from one to three acres and still have increased by 200 per cent.

Fortunately, it's increased much more than that. A quarter-century ago, canola -- still a relatively new crop compared to wheat -- occupied nine per cent of the Prairie land base, or 6.6 million acres. Now it occupies about 28 per cent, but those acres had to come from somewhere. If you follow the government's logic, without the wheat board, farmers would have stuck to wheat and barley and we wouldn't have such a vibrant canola industry.

Cereal acres have declined in Canada, but for reasons independent analysts will tell you have little to do with the marketing system. They've declined since the 1980s in the United States, too, by about 24 per cent.

Then there's this one: Did you know... "that Canadian market share in world barley export markets has declined by more than 65 per cent since the 1980s, while the pulse industry grew to $2 billion in export sales in 2010?" That's like saying a bird hit the window and died yesterday, while the cat caught a mouse. Do you see a connection?

In an utterly complete misrepresentation of history, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz would have us believe the monopoly was forced on western grain farmers.

"On Oct. 12, 1943, the CWB monopoly was born and imposed on Western Canadian farmers when Canada was committed to supplying cheap wheat to Europe during the Second World War. From then on, farmers would be forbidden to sell their wheat or barley to anyone but the CWB," he writes in a letter to the editor last month.

He caps it off with this: "So happy birthday, monopoly. We'll help you blow out your candles. Farmers will finally get their wish."

Independent historians tell a very different story. At that point in time, the Canadian government had just endured eight expensive years of a voluntary wheat board, much like the one the current government is so feverishly pursuing.

"By 1943, eight years' experience had demonstrated the problems created with a non-monopoly wheat board that co-existed with the open market," Duke University historian John Herd Thompson writes in a 1998 paper. "Such a dual marketing system produced two possible scenarios, each unacceptable from the federal government's perspective."

If the voluntary board's initial payment was set above a weak market, farmers delivered everything to the board, and the federal treasury had to make up the difference between the selling price and the initial payment. If the initial payment was set too low, however, farmers would deliver everything to the private trade.

It is true Canada was committed to supplying wheat to Britain and other wartime allies. Crop failures in the United States during the summer of 1943 had pushed wheat prices above the board's initial payment. To ensure adequate supplies, the government fixed the price of wheat -- at or above the going market price -- and terminated futures trading at the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.

But grain farmers, who had been lobbying for a permanent monopoly for decades, celebrated the move. Their only complaint was that the government hadn't done it sooner.

What's ironic about today's debate in the historical context is that governments of all stripes tried their darndest to get rid of the CWB between 1919 and the 1950s, when it came to be viewed as a national asset.

But it had more lives than a cat. Farmers so resoundingly supported it and their lobby was so powerful, politicians who meddled with it received a thumping at the polls.

Today, most farmers voted for the party that's trying to do it in. So why does the government have to justify the decision with factual distortions and revisionist history?

Laura Rance is editor of the Manitoba Co-operator. She can be reached at 792-4382 or by email: laura@fbcpublishing.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 5, 2011 B10