What's up with the CWB?

[cakadu]

There is sure some heavy debate going on at the CWB over whether or not to have a dual marketing system and follow the guidelines set out by the SPC earlier this month.

As could be expected, you have some of the board members that are dead set against relaxing the rules somewhat and others who want to at least give it a chance. The whole issue over whether we need the CWB or not has raged on for many years now.

What is the harm in seeing if a dual system will work? What are these CWB directors so afraid of? If the system were working and producers were making money, they wouldn't have a problem with it, would they?

At one point in time, the CWB maybe made sense, but like so many other things that were started during different times, they tend to have lost their effectiveness and should somehow be changed to fit the current (and possibly) future situations.

If we are making a move at the federal and provincial levels towards value-adding, how can that be done in the grain sector when there is just single desk selling and all these rules set out by the CWB? If we want producers to change their way of thinking, then the rest of the system has to change to accommodate what we want to happen in other areas. No sense in having one thing without the other - it just will not work.

Maybe the time has come to see some of these old institutions make changes that reflect the current situation and not deal with things the way they happened 30 years ago.

[charliep]

What is happening with the Ontario Wheat Producers Marketing Board? What is their policy/thinking on these issues?

If I were at a meeting/having coffee with a group of Ontario farmers, what would they be saying about the OWPMB? Happy? Mad? Wanting more change/freer marketing?

The only ones I hear speaking out of Ontario are the members of the Canadian National millers Association.

[AdamSmith]

I've talked to a few Ontario wheat farmers and those I have spoke to have said that the system is working fine for farmers. The big debate there, is the speed and degree to which they expand the free choice option. Some want to go slow, others want to shift it into overdrive.

But the comment to me was for those who want to market on their own, they can now do that and for those who prefer to still use the OWPMB, they can do that to.

As long as pooling is preserved as an option, the farmers are satisfied with the changes.

But we must understand that the OWPMB was never allowed to become the monster that the CWB has become. The OWPMB still would try to work with farmers on both sides of the issue and be accomodating to all farmers. Farmers came first and the OWPMB was a secondary issue.

Unlike the CWB which places itself and it's thirst for power first and farmers are secondary.

The OWPMB was/is able to reform itself because the mindset of the people at the OWPMB is condusive to be accomodating to farmers.

The CWB on the otherhand, is incapable of reform because, the people who run the CWB, ie the directors and top level staff see reform or freeing up the system as not being in THEIR best intrests and will stop at nothing and spend what ever is necessary to preserve the single desk. It has nothing to do with farmers and whether it might or might not work in the intrests of farmers.

In order for us to try to follow Ontario's lead we must first change the people at the CWB and probably alot of them. The first to go must be the 5 incumbent directors up for election this fall. Then probably every $80,000 employee at the CWB must be replaced with people who haven't been corupted by the place.

Then and only then can we hope to see the types of changes farmers are seeking.

It's either that or we push hard to get the entire CWB Act repealed and start with a clean slate.

What do the rest of you think, can the CWB be reformed?

[parsley]

There is a Wheat Board corporate culture entrenched in the staff and perpetuated by the Board of Directors that has set an unsustainable path for the CWB because through the direction they have set, there is an overwhelming lack of farmer-confidence that has reached the crisis stage.


Farmers don't believe the Board any longer. The most egregious evidence came from Jim Thompson, during the 1999 trial, The Queen v. Charles et al , when Thompson did not tell Judge Henningwhat the interprovincial licensing requirements within Canada really are . Jim Thompson was the Witness and the Court was Judge Henning. The transcripts speak for themselves:

The Court: ".... so therefore, by definition, virtually the buyback price only can apply to grain going outside of Canada."
Witness: "That's right, yes."

This is not true information. The buyback applies to all interprovincial movement of any barley and wheat destined for human consumption and this was important for the judge to get the correct information. He didn't get it from Thompson.

This is the corporate culture that farmers pay for.

AdamSmith, the answers and the decisions put forward by the corporate culture in the CWB are threaded with a bias that intends to sway. It doesn't matter the hurt that results, that reason is discarded, that farmers foot the bill. It's called ideology. The kind of ideology that demands pooling at any cost. The ideology that demands a single desk. The ideology that demands compliance and force to obtain both pooling and single desk.

That is what the CWB amonts to...an ideological culture. One that will pay a hack a $hundred grand a year, but will balk at paying the $CEO three hundred grand a year. (Other corporations pay their CEO's up to $1.4Million/ yr for running a comparible organization).

The CWB Corporate Culuture is not what farmers want; we deserve better, cakadu.

Parsley