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Harper Conservative's CWB Plebiscite Flawed and Undemocratic Cathy Fischer - March 8, 2007
As the deadline of March 13 approaches for the decision on the plebiscite regarding the sale of barley by the Canadian Wheat Board, more voices are being raised in opposition to the actions of the Harper government in this matter.
Stewart Wells, president of the National Farmers Union has written to Chuck Strahl, federal Minister of Agriculture, that “safeguards modern democracies use to ensure fair votes – public voters’ lists, clear ballot questions, transparent victory conditions, scrutinized vote counts, third-party spending limits – are almost all absent in this vote….Our organization has never encountered a voting process so riddled with errors, so handicapped by misdesign, so disdainful of accepted democratic safeguards, so unlikely to yield a meaningful result.”
Bruce Johnstone, financial editor for the Regina Leader Post, writing March 3, charges that Strahl, and Prime Minster Harper, “are attempting to drive a stake through the heart of the Canadian Wheat Board.” Johnstone is not the greatest supporter of the Wheat Board – in the same article he refers to the CWB as a ‘lightning rod of discontent among a vocal minority of producers.’ At the same time he enumerates the many features of the plebiscite which call for condemnation. “The plebiscite…applies only to barley producers, and not all of them. Thousands of producers have been dropped from the voters’ list, while multiple ballots have been sent to others. The ballots are numbered, raising the crucial issue of ballot secrecy, while the ballots feature not two, but three questions. Thus the real question: whether a clear majority of producers support the CWB monopoly, or the open market, for the export sale of barley, cannot be answered definitively.”
Johnstone warns: “Canadians, in all parts of the country, in all walks of life, should take a closer look at what lengths Canada’s new government is prepared to go to implement its neo-con agenda -- at least in the area of farm policy. The vote on the Canadian Wheat Board is perhaps the most egregious abuse of the democratic process since, well, the U.S. federal election in 2000.”
Saskatchewan’s provincial agriculture minister Mark Wartman has also come once more against the manner in which the plebiscite is being conducted, describing it as ‘flawed and undemocratic.’ Wartman cited the inclusion of three questions on the ballot as a key concern. The three choices are: maintain the Board as a single-desk agency for barley, scrap the Board’s role in barley, or have the Board as only one of the options in the market, that is a dual-marketing system. “Given the many questions and doubts surrounding the validity of this process, the federal government must not make any changes to legislation governing the Canadian Wheat Board – to implement either an open or dual market system – based on the results of this plebiscite.”
Inclusion of three questions on the ballot was also a major concern for supporters of the Canadian Wheat Board attending the meeting in Regina February 24. If all the other underhanded measures don’t result in a vote to get rid of the CWB as a single-desk agency, and if the vote for the second two choices added together is greater than the vote for the first choice, Strahl could interpret this as a vote against keeping the CWB as a single-desk agency. As Wartman notes, “Numerous studies suggest that the Wheat Board will not participate in a sustainable way in a dual-market situation,” a roundabout way of saying a dual market would be the end of the farmer’s marketing agency.
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