Lack of farmer unity

Scattered across four provinces and different, sometimes competing, farm organizations, farmer unity has rarely been in the forefront in recent years. This as farmers appear less and less aware of their rights and even less inclined to assert them under the Act. Moreover, the CGC has far more daily contact with grain handlers than it does with producers; if the squeaky wheel really does get the grease, farmers exist in a netherworld that’s grown increasingly silent. And there’s another problem – widespread belief that because farmers no longer own or control grain after it goes in the delivery pit they’re somehow no longer entitled to systematic safeguards at the elevator or a voice in quality assurance as grain advances through the system. This belief is often tied to the end of the Pools and CWB. We couldn’t disagree more! The producer rights conferred through the Canada Grain Act, from STIGAD to CGC scrutiny of elevator and terminal inventories, to the work of the assistant commissioners, were – and are – legislatively unrelated to co-op grain handling or the CWB. To suggest otherwise – that the Canada Grain Act is somehow dependent on these other institutions and illegitimate without them – is inaccurate historically; to promote this view in 2023 is to be blind to the one-sided power relations of 21st century grain handling.

Governments and the CGC

Ill-considered commissioner appointments (by both governing parties) earlier this century haven’t helped the CGC. In the worst instance, Commission leadership consisted of the blatantly political – and unprecedented – appointment of a former party and ideological ally as chief commissioner, a long time grain company executive as commissioner, and a farmer assistant chief commissioner who no sooner left office than assumed a senior position at Cargill where he was found in breach of federal ethics rules for, “acting in a manner that clearly took improper advantage of his previous positions at the Commission.”