Farmers looking forward to Wheat Board changes
Posted Jul 30, 2012 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Western Barley Growers Association is looking forward to the changes coming to grain farming on Wednesday.
That’s the day the bill C-18 is enacted, removing the monopoly power of the Canadian Wheat Board after 70 years.
WBGA president Doug Robertson says farmers got the short end of the stick when the monopoly was granted as a part of the War Measures Act.
“I remember my Grandfather saying, ‘nobody asked us if they could take away our rights in 1943, but we understood it was a part of the war efforts,'” Robertson says his Grandfather would then lament years later, “When’s the damn war going to be over?”
Robertson explains the Canadian Wheat Board still exists, but now farmers have a choice if they want to use it, and growers are already starting to produce more cereal products as a result.
