Common sense can often be found in unexpected places. On June 19, when the House of Commons debated wheat board marketing powers, a lot of it came from Bloc QuŽbecois MPs. Not to mention one of the very few touches of humor.
The debate was on a Reform proposal to allow producers to opt out of the board system for a two-year period and sell their grain privately.
Reform and Liberal MPs put forward their usual arguments over whether the wheat board could survive in the dual market that would result from the proposal.
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The Bloc MPs, meanwhile, expressed bewilderment that any western MPs could propose disrupting a marketing system that they feel has obviously served western farmers so well.
“It is a bit like having a member for Quebec or Ontario demanding an end to supply management in the case of eggs, poultry or milk,” said Bloc MP Jean-Guy ChrŽtien.
He and other Bloc members, noting that they were speaking partly for the benefit of Quebec farmers, described how the wheat board’s system of orderly marketing and price pooling helped give western farmers better markets, equity and some protection against roller-coaster prices.
“Memories are short on the Reform side about the advantages the Canadian Wheat Board has conferred,” said Bloc MP Jean Landry. “… People may say that the Canadian Wheat Board is not perfect, but to scuttle it in this underhanded manner through the motion the Reformers are presenting today borders on Reform mania.”
Instead of weakening their collective marketing strength, said ChrŽtien, western grain farmers should consider even greater co-operation by forming a union, as Quebec farmers did:
“If they wanted to unite, these 120,000 or 125,000 farmers, they would have immense political and economic clout.”
As Liberal MP Georgette Sheridan (Saskatoon-Humboldt) noted, “it is somewhat ironic that it takes a member of the Bloc QuŽbecois to explain to the third or fourth party the destructiveness of what it is Reform members are advocating this evening.”
That prompted one Reform MP to complain that the opinion of a Quebec MP wasn’t relevant.
But he might just have been in a bad mood after one Bloc MP made a reference to culling dairy cows and another Bloc MP joked: “Reform cows.”
“My colleagues are making a pun about Reform cows,” ChrŽtien helpfully explained, “because the word in French for cull cow is vache de rŽforme, which means, as you know, Mr. Speaker, dairy cows who are no longer good producers.”
