The latest backbench Conservative to sponsor legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly is a rural Ontario MP who is proposing the Ontario Wheat Board model.
Bruce Stanton, a second term MP from the Simcoe North riding north of Toronto and a former hotel operator, tabled private member’s bill C-619 today that would give prairie wheat and barley farmers the ability to opt out of using CWB services before the end of March each year.
Any farmer who opted out would have to stay out of the pool for at least two years and give a year’s notice before being allowed to return.
Stanton said it would give farmers choice while giving the wheat board stability by knowing how many farmers would make their grain available that year.
“This bill strikes a balance by retaining all the mechanisms of the statutory marketing authority and offering the alternative of marketing outside of the CWB,” he said in the news release unveiling the bill.
The tabling launched the usual flurry of back-and-forth accusations by the opposing sides in the wheat board debate.
Saskatchewan CWB critics Randy Hoback and David Anderson, parliamentary secretary to agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, quickly issued statements endorsing the latest of a number of private member’s bills tabled on the issue during the five years of Conservative government.
Hoback said the end of the Ontario Wheat Board monopoly has helped farmers in that province and allowed the board to remain viable and to diversify.
“I wholeheartedly believe that western Canadian farmers should have the same rights in marketing their product as farmers outside of Western Canada do,” the MP said in a statement.
Liberal Wayne Easter scoffed at the introduction of Stanton’s bill.
With hundreds of private member’s bills in the queue to be picked for House of Commons debate, it is unlikely to see the light of day before the next election kills all pending legislation.
“It is going nowhere, so it is just a government ploy to keep feeding its base,” he said. “And it flies in the face of the shellacking that the Conservatives took in the wheat board elections when farmers made it clear they want the single desk.”
Easter said any move for an opt out clause would require a farmer vote under the CWB Act.
“Instead of having the courage as a government to introduce legislation of its own and let it stand or fall, it uses backbenchers keep the troops happy,” he said. “It’s a game.”
