A motion by the Canadian Wheat Board Alliance is calling for the federal government to restore the now-defunct Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) and its single-desk marketing of Canadian wheat.
The group met in February in Swan River, Man. The group consisted of farmers from Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Allen Oberg, a former CWB director who farms near Forestburg, said that if the CWB was to be restored, it should only be restored after a vote by Canadian farmers.
"What I want to see is a vote to let farmers actually show what farmers want," he said. "The first thing is to make sure you have farmer support. Without it, there's no point in pursuing (restoring the CWB)."
The thing Oberg said he misses the most about the CWB is the equal delivery opportunity. Farmers could deliver their grain to the wheat board and the wheat board would see it sold, and it didn't matter if it was sold immediately or halfway through the next year. The farmer would be paid, and wouldn't be stuck sitting on grain that wasn't selling.
He stressed that the sale of the CWB did not mean a lot in terms of loss of assets because the organization did not have a lot of phyiscal assets. The real asset that the CWB had was the service it was able to provide the grain farmers throughout Western Canada.
Now, the system is much more first-come first-serve, Oberg explained. While that doesn't cause too much problem, when there are years of exceptional yield, like two years ago, farmers can find themselves in the queue waiting to sell their grain, making no money and losing value on their product.
"It was fairer in the sense that grain was regulated as it went in the system, so it offered equal delivery opportunity," Oberg said. it brought grain in as it was needed.
If the CWB was to be restored, it would face an uphill battle as there'd be issues with the North American Fair Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).