by Gerry Nicholls
Note: Now that the Conservative government is about to pull the plug on the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, I thought it would be a good time to post an article I wrote on this topic back in 2005. This article originally appeared in Business Report Magazine.
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There are two great unsolved mysteries when it comes to wheat.
Mystery number one: who created all those creepy crop circles? Mystery number two: why must western grain farmers still have to put up with the Wheat Board monopoly?
Of course, you can always blame the crop circles on aliens or on drunken frat boys, but the continued existence of a wheat monopoly simply defies all reason.
If you are not familiar with the Wheat Board monopoly then you don’t grow wheat or barley in westernCanada. If you did, you would know the monopoly is an archaic, oppressive, government-created marketing scheme that combines the worst elements of socialism, feudalism and bureaucratic stupidity.
Sound incredible?
Well consider that most people in the free world have the right to sell their own property to whomever they choose. But that’s not true for Western grain farmers. Under the law they are forced to sell nearly all their crops to the Canadian Wheat Board, whether they want to or not.
And if a farmer can find a better price for his crops from somebody other than the Wheat Board, well, that’s just too bad. Farmers who try to escape the monopoly can be arrested and even thrown into jail.
You might call it grain management Saddam Hussein-style.
For their part, Wheat Board bureaucrats say their stranglehold monopoly ensures, “Orderly Marketing”, which is pretty much the same type of marketing that made Joseph Stalin famous.
What’s going on here? If you toil for months to grow and nurture a crop you should also have the right to sell it to anybody you chose. It’s a basic freedom.
No wonder an increasing number of entrepreneurial farmers have had it with the Wheat Board.
Over the years they have challenged its monopoly in the courts; protested to politicians and even carried out mass acts of civil disobedience.
What do these farmers want? Just a choice. They simply want a system where farmers have the freedom to opt out of the monopoly if they choose to do so.
But the politicians won’t listen.
The same Liberal government which is pondering decriminalizing marijuana still believes in criminalizing the sale of wheat; and the same Liberal government which allows terrorist sympathizers into Canada still wants to put peaceful farmers into jail.
OK so maybe, when the Wheat Board monopoly was set up back in 1943 it made some sense. We were at war then, the country’s resources had to be conscripted in the cause of victory.
But here’s a news flash for the politicians: The war is over. Hitler is dead.
And a lot has changed since 1943. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Freedom and democracy won out over communism and tyranny.
Around the world, governments have come to understand that free markets work better than socialized, regulated economies.
For some reason, the Wheat Board ignores these developments and continues to plague the prairies with Soviet economics.
Why won’t the Wheat Board change?
Well, that’s the mystery.