Democracy gives all citizens in a nation or a group the right to have their views considered by those who lead them.
It does not guarantee that the views of the majority will determine the outcome of every issue.
The rights of minorities must be protected, too.
When majorities — in a nation or within a group — insist on imposing their will on minorities who should be free to make their own decisions, that’s not democracy.
That’s called the tyranny of the majority.
It’s a vile and sinister way to govern.
It’s precisely what the most fervent backers of the Canadian Wheat Board want to continue imposing on prairie grain farmers today.
The election of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on May 2 was a momentous day for Western grain farmers who have long sought the right to sell their grain where they want, at a price that is mutually agreeable.
They want what their counterparts east of Manitoba have enjoyed forever.
Right now, they are hobbled by rules that give the wheat board monopoly power to market certain prairie grains for export.
Harper has long promised to remove those shackles. With a majority government, he now has the votes to make it happen.
To do so, he will have to amend the law.
Legislation now obliges the federal government to consult Western grain farmers before changing rules that would let them export grain where and when they want.
Directors of the wheat board are insisting on a plebiscite of prairie grain farmers before that happens.
“Farmers have the right to be asked,” said Allen Oberg, the Alberta farmer who is chairman of the board of directors, last week.
“The current law requires that they be asked but the current government plans to change the law to circumvent that requirement.”
“A fair plebiscite will settle that question,” Oberg added.
Not really. A plebiscite might confirm the status quo, but it would not settle anything.
If most prairie grain farmers want one agency to be their exclusive marketing agent, consolidating their crops and getting the very best price for farmers in international grain markets by virtue of their size and marketing clout, let them have at it.
If they want to delegate marketing rights for the crops they struggle so mightily to grow year after year to others, the Canadian government will not stand in their way.
Harper’s government has nothing in mind to prevent grain farmers from operating co-operatively if that’s what they choose to do.
Where Harper and the Conservatives rightly draw the line is on the matter of compulsion.
Prairie farmers today are smart, tough entrepreneurs. They have to be, to endure all the challenges they face every year.
The same intelligence, skills, foresight and tenacity that they display in growing crops every year should not be restricted unreasonably when it comes to selling their grains in export markets.
Modern communications technology makes that abundantly possible today.
In years past, grain price reports were a staple feature on CBC noon broadcasts across the Prairies.
Agriculture was the dominant industry and farmers needed price data five days a week to help them determine what crops to grow and when to take them to market.
All that has changed.
Farming is no longer the dominant industry. More fundamentally, information technology that is readily available to every prairie farmer makes once-a-day radio crop price reports largely irrelevant.
At any time of the day or night, farmers can log on to internet-linked computers to check grain prices, crop conditions, weather forecasts and political events that are shaping commodity prices and yields around the globe.
“Any plebiscite must never trump the rights of those farmers who want to choose how they market their own grain,” Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said last week.
Precisely.
If the freedom to export grain has been good enough for farmers in Ontario and Quebec for a century, surely it is good enough for prairie farmers today.
International grain markets are based on treating crops as commodities: one bushel of No. 1 red spring wheat of a certain grade is the same as any other bushel of the same grade, and commands the same price at any point in time.
The Canadian Wheat Board export monopoly is based on treating every Prairie grain farmer as a commodity.
They are emphatically not. Some farmers are good; some are lousy.
The lousy ones don’t last long, and the good ones deserve the right to make their own decisions on every possible aspect of their multi-million dollar enterprises.
With a majority government, the tyranny of the majority is over, and Prime Minister Harper can finally make that happen.
Joe McLaughlin is the retired former managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate.