Wheat producers in east revolt against their board

Friday, June 5, 2009

© AgMedia Inc.

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Representatives of Ontario Wheat Producers’ Marketing Board’s District 10 threw down the gauntlet Thursday night. They threaten to withdraw from the board if chair David Whaley doesn’t meet with them next week  to address their concerns.

Representatives from many county committees in the eastern Ontario district, meeting in Winchester, voted unanimously to call for a meeting with Whaley on June 11, says John Vanderspank, the district’s controversial director on the provincial board.
 
“Please respect our request to fully reinstate John Vanderspank as elected or satisfactorily address our concerns,” states a letter sent to Whaley at 8:30 Friday morning.  “Failure to do so will result in District 10 withdrawing” from the provincial board, said the letter, signed by delegates and executives for wheat committees in Glengarry, Dundas, Lanark/Carleton, Frontenac/Leeds/Grenville, Renfrew and Prescott.

Whaley says he will decide whether to attend the meeting after he receives the formal notice. He had not yet received it when interviewed before 9:30 a.m. on Friday morning.

While the flash point is the partial suspension of district 10 director John Vanderspank, Lanark, at the board’s May meeting, a long list of grievances is cited.

Vanderspank says among the District 10 representatives’ concerns are:

• Lack of access to the actual cost of production numbers to calculate the support needed for a proposed grains and oilseeds risk management;
• Why the board won’t help other boards fund the purchase of a combine for a research station in Kemptville;
• The legality of the non-confidence resolution concerning Vanderspank;
• Giving producer information without permission to OnTrace, a provincial organization addressing food traceability;
• Lack of grain storage capacity in eastern Ontario;
• The board’s actions concerning the payout for protein on hard red spring wheat;
• The future of wheat research in eastern Ontario.

Vanderspank says the district set a deadline of June 16, the provincial board’s next meeting, for the terms to be met and for his reinstatement.

A resolution passed at the wheat board’s May meeting bans Vanderspank, in his second term as a board director, from confidential portions of board meetings and all committee work.

The partial suspension resulted from an article Vanderspank wrote in an eastern Ontario publication. Whaley says it revealed confidential information.

“You’ve got a fellow here who every time he doesn’t get his way at a board meeting, he runs to the media,” Whaley says. “A board can’t function like that.”

He says Vanderspank’s reputation as a radical activist “got to the board before he did.” Vanderspank is a founding member of the Lanark Landowners Association. Nevertheless, Whaley says the board gave Vanderspank “every chance to belong.”

“He has chosen not to (belong).”

“This whole contention that we’ve all of a sudden pulled out the axe and chopped this guy’s head off is untrue,” says Whaley. “I guess we’re just the villains.”
 
Vanderspank says the district’s action sends a message to the Grain Growers of Ontario (the new amalgamated wheat, corn and soy producer board takes effect this fall). “Eastern Ontario wants their director to represent them and to be heard and we want more openness with the board.”

Vanderspank says district members have “no idea” how they would operate outside the board but “if we don’t do something, they’re just going to shuffle this to the bottom of the pile and hope it goes away.”

The district includes counties east of Kingston and “the rest of Ontario not included in Districts 1-9,” says the board’s website.  According to the wheat board, there are about 488 wheat producers in the district and 17,000 wheat producers in the province. BF