Tempest in a Teapot ?

Things you already know about the Canadian Wheat Board. It is the sole seller of Western Canadian wheat. It makes an initial payment to farmers when they deliver their wheat to market. After all the wheat is sold for that crop year it makes the final payment. It sets its initial payment based on what it thinks the outlook for sales are before it is actually selling the wheat. If the market price moves up it can make an adjustment to the initial payment reflecting the higher market price.

However, both the initial payment and the adjustments have to be approved by the government of the day.
In 2002 the initial payment was set at $4.69 per bushel as of August 1st ( the start of the crop year ). An adjustment was made effective September 17 upping the payment by 87 cents.
That is a time frame of about 7 weeks. I do not know when, in that instance, the CWB would have made application to the Federal government to adjust the initial price.

Same situation this year. The CWB made application to the government to adjust the initial price on August 15. The feds ( read Cons ) have not yet given their ok to the adjustment. The Cons are essentially holding back money that should be going, and going quickly, to the farmers. Ken Ritter is a elected director of the CWB serving as the Chairman of the Board. Greg Arason is the CEO of the CWB, appointed by Harper last year. Ritter's comments that it is a "tempest in a teapot" are a bit puzzling to me.

It's like the Cons don't really care about Western farmers - the very people that elected them. Or could it be that they are playing politics with the farmer's money. The Cons are dragging their feet to make the CWB look bad because the Cons want to see the CWB gone.

So what says the new kid from Canada's ewwww Government ( from the above link ) ?

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said in a statement last Friday that the government is "working hard'' to review the CWB's request for higher initial payments.
But Ritz blamed the CWB for any delay in getting the money into farmer's hands.
"It's unfortunate that it took the CWB nearly two weeks to make the request to begin the process to adjust the initial price,'' Ritz said, noting the CWB released the initial prices Aug. 2, but only asked the government to raise initial payments on Aug. 15.

The following is from an article in the Sept. 20th Western Producer ( behind a subscription firewall )

[National Farmers Union president Stewart] Wells questioned whether the federal government's antipathy toward the CWB might be behind the time it takes to respond, in the hope it might make farmers angry at the marketing agency.
"I'm not suggesting that's what's happening, but I wouldn't rule it out given the incredibly hostile behaviour of this government towards the board over the past 12 months," he said.
[President of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers
Association Cherilyn] Jolly-Nagel said she can't imagine the government would deliberately delay getting much-needed cash to farmers just to score political points.

So is the government "working hard" or hardly working ? Looks to me like they are not 'getting it done'.