A necessary correction

The first meeting in Chuck Strahl's effort to undermine the Canadian Wheat Board is now over, and Strahl is only showing his contempt for farmers who support the Wheat Board in the process he plans to follow from here on in:

There have been calls for Ottawa to put any changes in the wheat board to a farmer plebiscite, although Strahl says the government has the power to act on its own in some areas.

"We will be looking at what we can do by regulations, what we need to do by legislation and if necessary what we need to do by plebiscite," he said.

The problem with Strahl's explanation is that the Wheat Board is entirely a creature of a statute which explicitly provides (see ss. 45 and 46) that regulations may be made which allow for exports outside the Board. Which means that while Strahl find it convenient to muddy the waters by pretending to be willing to hold any "necessary" plebiscite, the reality is that there's no way a plebiscite can be "necessary" or "needed". Any plebiscite could only be based on the Cons reaching the reasonable conclusion that the farmers who stand to be affected by his party's desire to trash the Wheat Board should have some say in whether the process continues.

But one has to assume that if Strahl was the least bit open to letting farmers generally have a say on the future of the Wheat Board, he wouldn't have gone to such great lengths to exclude any dissenting views from his planning meetings. And his apparent intention to use the Cons' regulatory power regardless of farmers' views doesn't do anything to improve the odds that he'll suddenly start considering approval by those affected to be a "necessary" step. Which means that for those who hope to save the Wheat Board, the only way a vote can make a difference now is if Strahl's dismantling of the Board can be pushed past the next federal election.