New CEO named for Canadian Dairy Commission

The Canadian Dairy Commission has hired from within for its new chief executive.

Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on Wednesday announced Benoit Basillais, the CDC’s director of policy and economics, became the Crown corporation’s new CEO effective Monday.

Basillais replaces Serge Riendeau, the dairy producer and former Agropur Co-operative president who’s been the CDC’s chief executive since 2018.

Basillais, who studied agricultural economics in France and has a master’s degree in rural economics from Laval University, has worked for the CDC since 2003. Starting there as an economist, he was named director of policy and economics in 2016.

The new appointee “is very familiar with both the stakeholders and the issues facing the dairy industry,” Bibeau said in a release Wednesday.

“Now as CEO, I trust that he will make a significant contribution to the success of the dairy industry while increasing the transparency of the pricing mechanism.”

The CDC is tasked with co-ordinating federal and provincial dairy policies; it administers the dairy production control mechanism used to avoid production shortages or surpluses. Its CEO serves as one of three members of the commission’s board of directors, along with the chairperson and a commissioner.

Former CDC commissioner Jennifer Hayes was named as its chairperson at the end of 2021, which leaves just the commissioner’s seat vacant at the board table.

CDC governance was raised in a special report from the federal auditor general’s office in March last year, which called on the commission’s board to keep in touch with the ag minister’s office on a “timely basis” to make sure it maintains a full complement at the board table.

That report found no board meetings had to be cancelled or any decisions left unresolved, but having one empty chair at a three-member board table nevertheless “poses a significant risk that the board would be unable to make decisions and operate effectively,” the auditor general’s office said.

That poses a risk particularly for the CDC. Its requirement for members to have “significant dairy industry experience,” with one member also serving as CEO, makes it somewhat more likely that a “real, potential or perceived” conflict of interest could pop up, requiring at least one member to abstain from voting on certain decisions.

Maintaining a full slate of CDC board members, the report noted, is the responsibility of the federal Governor in Council — that is, Canada’s governor general on the advice of the federal cabinet.

An Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada spokesperson said via email Thursday the department is
in the midst of the ongoing process to fill the CDC commissioner position “following the open, transparent and merit-based processes for selecting Governor in Council appointees” — and thus can’t yet say when a commissioner appointee will be named.

The June 30 order in council to appoint Basillais as CDC CEO sets his term at four years.

Basillais “brings with him a complete understanding of the issues faced by the sector,” AAFC said in its statement Wednesday, adding his background and “extensive knowledge of the Canadian supply management system allows him to identify and present innovative approaches to each unique situation.”

Riendeau, whose term as CEO was extended in April 2021 for one additional year, “has worked to improve collaboration between segments of the dairy supply chain, and supported the modernization of supply management,” AAFC said. — Glacier FarmMedia Network