In the face of attacks from both sides of the issue, Canadian Wheat Board minister Ralph Goodale last week sent his CWB reform legislation to the Senate claiming it is the best compromise possible.
“Bill C-4 represents an honest attempt to find some reasonable common ground,” Goodale told the House of Commons during debate Feb. 17. “It safeguards our grain marketing strengths.”
The Liberals used their Commons majority to cut off debate. The final Commons vote to approve the wheat board bill was 138-116. The bill went to the Senate where political and farmer critics will use public hearings to try to win changes they failed to obtain in the Liberal-dominated Commons.
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Goodale used the final debate to settle some scores.
He took aim at his parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opponents and even the Tory government his Liberals replaced in 1993.
With Reform and Conservative MPs attacking the proposal for being too timid and not giving farmers enough choice because the monopoly remains, Goodale said farmers in future will be able to decide what powers they want the board to have.
Two-thirds of the 15-member board of directors will be elected by farmers.
“The directors will be in charge and they will decide, not the babbling baboons of the Reform party,” said Goodale.
He criticized the extra-parliamentary critics, led by the National Citizens’ Coalition, for trying to “pervert the legitimate debate about Bill C-4 with a grossly irresponsible disinformation campaign.”
And to those opposing the bill because they fear the changes proposed by Goodale will undermine the wheat board, the minister said the Liberal government has been the best friend the grain industry and the board have had in recent years. He said the government is trying to create a process for change that will give farmers a say.
The grain marketing debate is at least a quarter century old, he said.
“It reached a high boil in the early years of this decade after the Mulroney government attempted to diminish the CWB through a combination of benign neglect, sabotage and mandate reductions without parliamentary authorization and without any meaningful consultation with farmers,” said Goodale.
“This was the situation that our government inherited.”
Opposition critics dismissed Goodale’s long defence as self-serving rhetoric.
Reform agriculture critic Jay Hill called the Liberal process a “long dead-end road.”
They now will attempt to carry those arguments into the Senate and to once again mobilize the non-parliamentary forces.
