The Senate has abandoned its attempt to protect the Canadian Wheat Board from a Conservative government effort to include it in an Access-to-Information law.
The Dec. 7 decision by a senate committee not to pursue the fight was one of several Parliament Hill setbacks for the wheat board last week.
Two days earlier, board officials had appeared before a senate committee studying for the second time the Conservative Accountability Act to insist that the board should not have to submit to the information law.
The House of Commons had included the board in the bill in its original form, the Senate removed it and sent the bill back and the House reinserted it and sent it back to the Senate.
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On Dec. 5, CWB chair Ken Ritter and board lawyer Jim McLandress appeared before the senate legal and constitutional affairs committee to recommend that senators once again remove the CWB from the act or at least give it added protection against requests for information that could be commercially sensitive.
Federal deputy information commissioner dismissed wheat board arguments as wrong.
Alan Leadbeater told senators that the access-to-information rules already protect commercial secrets.
Two days later, the Liberal-dominated Senate agreed to not persist in trying to protect the wheat board.
Winnipeg Conservative senator Terry Stratton laid the groundwork for the decision by forcing CWB lawyer McLandress to concede that in the face of any access-to-information request for sensitive information, the wheat board would decide what could be released. The appeal process against a decision to withhold information is cumbersome.
