The federal government has brought forward a bill that, if passed, could restore Ottawa’s hand at the levers of Canadian Wheat Board marketing policy.
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on Monday introduced an end-run around the Canadian Wheat Board Act’s much-discussed section 47.1 — the section that currently blocks Ritz from adding or removing Prairie wheat or barley from the CWB’s single marketing desk without consulting the CWB’s board of directors and holding a producer vote.
Ritz’s bill proposes a “section 47.1.1” that would allow Canada’s governor general, on the advice of the federal Cabinet, to amend or repeal any regulation that section 47.1 creates.
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The amendment, if passed, would thus let the federal Cabinet “allow farmers to sell their barley to any foreign or domestic buyer, including the CWB,” the government said in a release Monday.
In a statement Monday, the CWB chided Ritz for taking “unilateral action that disregards major legislative changes of 1998, which were intended to transfer control of the CWB from government to a board made up mostly of elected producers.”
Such a change in the Act is seen as unlikely to get past the three federal opposition parties in a minority House of Commons, but Ritz told reporters Monday that the government is still considering making the matter a confidence vote, which could bring down the government and force a federal election.
The Conservatives have yet to lose a confidence motion in the House, faced with opposition parties reluctant to pull that trigger.
Monday’s legislation follows the federal government’s attempt last year to deregulate Prairie barley marketing by a federal order in council without a vote in Parliament. A Federal Court ruling blocked that route, and a government attempt to appeal that ruling was rejected last week.
Ritz’s bill also includes a CWB Act amendment on commercial dispute resolution, which his release said “would encourage producers and grain
elevator companies to pursue the option of commercial arbitration, with the CWB, instead of resorting to the court system, which can be lengthy and costly.”
Under that amendment, the CWB could not “unreasonably withhold consent” to go to arbitration with farmers or grain companies. It would apply only to the CWB’s “commercial behaviour” and not any decisions the board is authorized to make under the CWB Act, the government said.
