With the release of government documents under the Access to Information act getting more difficult by the day, how nice to see a cabinet document pop up among the now public submissions on the Canadian Wheat Board’s ‘gag order’ case.

The Board faced off against the government in federal court yesterday in Winnipeg.

First, a bit of background:

The Board is taking the federal government to court to dispute the Harper government’s orders to refrain from advertising or otherwise advocating for a single desk marketing system. In other words, when faced with the government’s stated determination (they campaigned on it) to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly, the Board was told it wasn’t allowed to defend publicly its ‘single desk’ system.

This arose because of the public campaign for farmers’ votes during last year’s barley plebiscite. While non-binding, the government intended to use a favourable result to justify its decision to proceed with dismantling the monopoly on barley marketing. The government could campaign in favour of ending the monopoly, but the Board itself wasn’t allowed to advertise in defence of the merits of the current system.

Under the Canadian Wheat Board Act, the Board is accountable to the farmers it represents — they elect some of its board members, for example. So the table was set for a nasty public debate over who is really representing ‘what farmers want’ — the Board, whose structure is designed to ensure it represents the farmers whose crops it sells, or the Conservative government, which of course had more than a few of its MPs elected in rural prairie ridings full of those same farmers.

Now, onto the document itself.

Dated August 10, 2006, it’s a declassified ‘secret’ draft memorandum to cabinet — which journalists and other document hounds will recognize as pretty much the best kind to set eyes on, because it spells out in black and white the options cabinet will consider on a given issue. This kind of insight helps get inside the head of a government — always useful, but particularly difficult with this government’s more closed communications style.

The ‘Options’ portion of the memo lays bare the things the government was considering to ensure it could keep its campaign promise and end the Wheat Board monopoly.

The first option discussed is a non-binding vote by producers. This of course eventually came to pass in the form of the much-discussed barley plebiscite early in 2007.

What’s interesting is the question to be used in the vote. The memo talks about a straightforward choice between the single desk system or a dual marketing system (to introduce some free market sales in addition to the Wheat Board.)

The question the government actually used in the plebiscite was a bit trickier — it gave three choices: single desk, dual marketing or free market.

In the end the government added the second and third results together to conclude that the majority of producers supported an end to the monopoly. The Board to this day refutes that conclusion and claims the use of a three-pronged question made the vote ‘meaningless.’

The second option discussed is replacement of the five appointed directors on the Board, including the CEO, with individuals in favour of ‘marketing choice.’ In other words, recognizing that it couldn’t control the opinions of those directors elected by farmers, the government sought to use the means it had at its disposal to fashion a Board more friendly to government policy (dismantling the monopoly.)

Late in 2006, the Conservatives terminated the former President and CEO of the Wheat Board, Adrian Measner. Other Board members objected to this decision, and the issue of authorizing compensation for the interim appointee to the position who followed, Greg Arason, remains a bone of contention between the government and the Board. (The court heard another court case on this issue specifically concurrently to the ‘gag order’ case. Similar principles were involved — that is to say, who has the ultimate authority over what the Board does?)

The third option is considerably more Machiavellian and was never used. But apparently, the government considered tabling legislation to remove the requirement for a producer vote, and perhaps dismantle the farmer-governed monopoly Wheat Board system entirely and replace it with a voluntary marketing organization for wheat and barley. The cabinet document notes ‘it is unlikely the legislation would pass. However the intent of the Government of Canada would be clear and could be implemented when sufficient support in Parliament is available.’

In other words, when the Conservatives win a majority.

The fourth option is to ‘direct the [Board] to do certain things’ by government order, ‘to create marketing choice.’ Examples given are issuing interprovincial and export licences upon request without charge or at a low cost to producers — in essence, making it easier to get permission from the Wheat Board to sell commodities outside their marketing system. Chipping away at the monopoly, in effect, piece by piece. Marketing choice by the back door, perhaps.

The Canadian Wheat Board dispute is hardly the first time the single-minded tactics of Stephen Harper’s government have faced criticism and dissent. But a source inside federal court in Winnipeg on Monday tells CBC News that at one point the judge hearing the case compared the government’s orders to something (controversial Zimbabwean leader) Robert Mugabe would do. Ouch.

The judge has reserved decision in this case.