Opposition MPs on a parliamentary committee last week agreed that under the government’s Accountability Act, non-commercial operations of the Canadian Wheat Board should be open to scrutiny under federal access-to-information legislation.
This week, after a strong reaction from the wheat board, opposition MPs are scrambling.
“I think we can get this out of the bill,” Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said June 15. “It was a really serious, really bad move to put that in. I did not know about it.”
Even the New Democratic Party MP whose motion to include the CWB under the act was accepted without dissent by MPs from all parties had agreed by week’s end to reverse himself, although reluctantly.
Read Also
Ukraine may disrupt wheat market
The EU is curtailing its wheat imports, forcing Ukraine to find new markets at a time of stagnating demand.
Winnipeg MP Pat Martin, an accountability and access-to-information advocate, said his party’s agriculture critic Alex Atamanenko had prevailed on him to change his vote, if not his mind.
“My party’s critic has intervened and convinced me that I should not have sought this amendment,” said Martin. “He has also convinced me to take steps to have this action reversed. My opinion has not changed. I believe the necessary protections are there.”
Defenders of the board said its critics could use access-to-information requests to burden the CWB with costly bureaucracy and also to get information about internal workings of the board that could be twisted against it.
“There would be very little benefit for farmers,” board communications vice-president Deanna Allen said. “The only people this will aid are our competitors, to get information they can use against us.”
The Accountability Act, the Conservative government’s first legislative act, is a massive document that has been subject to intense parliamentary study and hundreds of proposals for detailed amendments as the government tries to get House of Commons approval and the bill sent off to the Senate by the time Parliament adjourns for the summer late this week.
David Anderson, parliamentary secretary to the agriculture minister and a critic of what he calls wheat board secrecy, said including the wheat board was a good move that received all-party support. Other government agencies and corporations including the CBC are included but because the CWB is not a crown corporation, it had to be added specifically.
“Commercial is exempt but I think you’ll see people using it to find out how much money has been spent on advertising, surveying, polling and the day-to-day activities of the board,” he said.
However, once Easter found out what had happened at committee, he began to organize an effort to have it reversed and this week, a motion in Easter’s name will try to accomplish it before the bill is approved.
