AHEAD OF THE HEARD -- An announcement by the Canadian Sheep Federation (CSF) that it will continue to soldier on despite losing its two largest members is a political hazard for national producer group’s face. Those divorce situations are the result of industry politics, power struggles or financial and language problems. The usual response to those machinations is for a province to withdraw from the organization in the hope that it will force the national group to compromise to get them back.
This tactic is regularly used by some member provinces of national quota boards for chicken, eggs, and dairy. The idea is that by leaving the national quota structure, it would set the scenario of possibly destroying the entire national share allocation system. That type of brinkmanship usually results in an accommodation to the rebel province’s demands. That doesn’t happen with most other national producer groups, where the attitude seems to be good riddance to the rebel province.
With the CSF situation, it’s history repeating itself. Back in the 1990s, there was a predecessor national organization, the Canada Sheep Council. It was more a creature of the federal government and faced persistent administrative, political and financial problems. Quebec was the first to leave and later Alberta left over a dispute with management. It took a couple of years and a new national group the CSF was created which supposedly dealt with the problems of the previous organization. However, Quebec soon left and then the two largest members Ontario and Alberta departed. Will they all kiss and make up ? The reality is national organizations are needed to deal with the federal government so some reconciliation will eventually happen. Except for Quebec, sheep producers in that province have the biggest farm lobby in the country to act on their behalf. It’s why Quebec producer groups are more prone to leave national organizations.
Quebec farmers of every kind have a powerful lobby group - the Union des Producteurs Agricole (UPA). It’s well-financed by compulsory checkoffs on all producers and is organized on a regional and commodity basis. It’s a multi-million dollar operation with a large professional staff and a history of success and brandishing political power – plus they speak French, which is not always an ability Canadian national organizations possess. But more important the UPA is a lobbying force to be reckoned with at the national level. No wonder Quebec farm commodity groups prefer to have the UPA represent them on national issues. Most national groups understand the UPA political reality, so they don’t fight too hard to maintain or regain their Quebec members. For instance, Quebec beef cattle producers (they are UPA affiliates) are not members of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA), a situation that seems not to worry the organization or the federal government.
Quebec remains a participant in other national sheep organizations like the Canadian Sheep Breeders Association – but that group is mostly involved in managing registered sheep pedigrees which doesn’t involve a lot of politics and language. There is also the venerable and iconic Canadian Cooperative Wool Growers (CCWG), it’s an organization that buys wool and sells sheep supplies to producers. It’s been in business since 1918. Until the 1960s and the creation of the Canada Sheep Council, the CCWG acted as the de-facto national sheep producers organization. Some producers would say that the CCWG still has such pretensions. Besides the aforementioned three national sheep groups, there used to be another one called the Lamb Feeders of Canada Association. But multiple representative groups are nothing new in the ag industry. Beef Cattle producers have a national entity – the CCA, but there is also the Canadian Beef Breeds Council and the National Cattle Feeders Association. No doubt all groups try to cooperate but there is going to be some disagreement and competition between them on issues. Alberta has a long history of differing provincial livestock groups – at one time there were over 20 groups, associations, entities, committees etc. that all claimed to represent Alberta cattle producers of one sort or another. Even Alberta sheep producers have half a dozen local and provincial entities to represent them on various issues.
It’s no different for grain, crop and oilseed producers where competing groups all claim to represent their specific commodity. Although, the last few years has seen some consolidation and rearranging of provincial and national crop groups. For governments, all those groups remain a challenge/mystery as to who represents whom on what and when – but then that’s all part of the fun of agricultural politics in Canada.