It was difficult to tell if Larry Maguire was trying to flatter the Senators or take a swipe at them. As he sat down before the Senate agriculture committee in Regina last week to make the Western Canadian Wheat Growers’ pitch for a voluntary Canadian Wheat Board, Maguire pleaded with the Senators to make radical, rather than cosmetic, proposals to change the wheat board bill.
“It is being commonly said that the Senate committee will likely address only the inclusion and exclusion clauses and that the current government will not consider recommendations on any other aspects of the bill,” he said.
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“We cannot believe the federal government would so undermine the democratic process as to try to restrict the committee in its findings or that the committee would allow itself to be manipulated in this manner.”
Never mind the absurdity of pleading in the name of democracy that the unelected Senate subvert the will of the elected House of Commons.
Maguire and his anti-monopoly allies properly see these Senate hearings as their last chance in this round to embarrass the Liberal government over the wheat board issue.
It is unlikely anyone appearing before the committee honestly believes the Senate will advocate an end to the monopoly. Liberals do outnumber Conservatives, after all.
And even if they did, the House of Commons still would have final say.
Yet if the Senators touring the prairies these past two weeks think their role is to merely affirm government proposals or to act as a rubber stamp, they are not showing it. They probe witnesses, listen to the endless repeat of arguments and ask intelligent questions.
They talk about shortcomings in the bill or the government’s approach to try to sell it. They are polite to witnesses who have not always been cautious in their choice of words.
In the less-partisan atmosphere of the Senate, the give-and-take with witnesses often is less politically driven than similar hearings before fiercely partisan MPs.
Meanwhile, the Senators are enjoying the parade of witnesses, many of them presumably Reformers and hostile to the appointed Senate, who sing their praises.
They are lauded for travelling to hear farmer opinion first hand. They are praised for their open-minded approach.
Senators accustomed to ridicule or invisibility bask in the warmth of the moment.
This probably is the most favorable western Senate exposure in years.
Yet intervenors would be naive to imagine this committee will return to Ottawa and either want to or be able to overturn the wheat board legislation. The government would not allow it. So what happens, after all the travel and heart-felt testimony, if the bill passes into law with just minor amendments that do not deal with the core of the critics’ complaints?
Despite the good vibes the Senators are receiving now, that result will simply increase the anger and alienation of western farmers who took the time to attend the meetings and then found they were a democratic charade.
