I've never been a fan of the Canadian
Wheat Board. Growing up on a small mixed farm, I gained my resentment
of the CWB, the railways and the quota system by osmosis.
If there was value in any of these, my
dad and my family never saw very much of it.
So I shed no tears in 2012, when the
Harper government put an end to the CWB monopoly. But as a taxpayer,
I at least expected some payback when it would be privatized. As
would, I assumed, the prairie farmers whose forced sales of their
wheat and barley had built the CWB into a global grain marketing
power.
Now, we discover, that won't be the
case.
In addition to the marketing contacts
and expertise within the CWB, there are physical assets that must be
evaluated when the marketing entity goes public.
But as early as 2011, news reports
quote federal ag minister Gerry Ritz saying the CWB has no assets.
So, what about the 3,400 rail cars? Or a couple of Great Lakes
freighters, or the four high-throughput elevators the CWB hastily
ordered into construction?
The transition from public board to
private business is necessarily being done in secret. The minister
uses his executive powers to control all financial information about
the status and operation of the CWB.
That much seems necessary. But I
thought the government was doing this to protect my interests as a
taxpayer. According to recent news reports, not so much.
Reports say Ritz also denies the
government “owns” the CWB. The government fired the
farmer-represented board, and appointed their own selected board —
and they don't own it?
They gave the CWB $349 million in
taxpayer dollars to facilitate the transition to private ownership,
and the government says taxpayers have no stake or share in its
assets?
And that, whoever ends up owning the
CWB before the government-set deadline in 2016, for whatever price,
neither farmers nor taxpayers will see a cent of it?
Right now, if you are a farmer who
sells grain to the CWB this year, you are eligible to set up a
contract, under which, for $5 a tonne of delivered grain in the
future, you will get partial ownership of the CWB.
In other words, producers will be
allowed to pay for their tiny slice of the new organization that will
grow out of the CWB, but the new majority owners (most likely one of
the U.S.-based transnational giants) will not put up one cent of the
purchase price.
Taxpayers will get zero for their
investment into the CWB. Prairie farmers whose forced sales created
the assets the CWB now owns, get nothing.
And the Harper government sees this as
a good deal.
I opposed the sale of Petro-Canada. It
was a bad deal then, and looking back, taxpayers would have been a
lot better off as owners of an integrated energy company, than as
sellers of it.
As it stands now, the national oil
companies of France, Norway and China own and control more energy
assets in Alberta than Albertans do.
But at least we (the owners) got
something back when Petro-Canada was privatized.
From the few facts available about the
privatization of the Canadian Wheat Board, we get nothing.
A group of Saskatchewan farmers formed
the Farmers of North America, which spun off Genesis Grain and
Fertilizer. NFA claims about 10,000 members, and they put up a bid to
buy the CWB, which they apparently valued at $270 million.
That bid was rejected, with no reason
given.
Another group of farmers launched a
lawsuit, saying over $17 billion in value simply disappeared when the
CWB monopoly disappeared. That case will be heard in spring.
When the whole CWB privatization debate
was ongoing, there were experts (and others) presenting facts about
grain sales that could make your head spin.
But there was the gut acknowledgement
that forced monopoly grain sales for Canadian prairie grain and for
no one else, was wrong.
Expect further spin when privatization
is summarily announced.
But it appears the gut acknowledgement
that farmers and taxpayers would get some cash value from this will
go by the boards.
That's wrong, too.
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