Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz admits the government is running out of time to change the voting rules for the autumn Canadian Wheat Board election.
Rules governing the 2010 CWB election will likely be the same as those that governed the 2008 election unless Liberal MPs Wayne Easter or Ralph Goodale “have an epiphany on the way home” and decide to support government proposals, he said.
And Ritz says House of Commons opposition MP resistance to government proposals that would change the rules and responsibilities of both the CWB and the Canadian Grain Commission points to the need for a Conservative majority to get its farm and rural agenda through.
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“It certainly makes the argument that we need a majority to move forward on the gun registry bill,” he said in a late June interview after the Commons adjourned for its 13-week summer break.
“We need a majority to move forward on changes that are drastically required for the Canadian Wheat Board and the grain commission. It would make my life easier and farmers could start to look forward to a lot of that benefit.”
Opposition MPs who hold a majority in the Commons have a different view.
They consider Conservative proposals to change the wheat board and reform the grain commission to be dangerous ideas that would weaken farmer protection and power in the grain market.
They are insisting on extensive Commons committee hearings on the controversial proposals, a stance that Ritz considers obstruction.
He introduced legislation in May, Bill C-27, which would limit the CWB voters’ list to farmers who had produced at least 40 tonnes of one of the seven CWB Act grains during the past three years.
The government did not call it for debate before the summer recess.
Ritz blamed the opposition for wanting to oppose and delay the bill.
“It is unfortunate that we couldn’t even get agreement at the house leaders’ level to bring that forward to have a good honest debate on that,” he said.
“Right away, we saw the opposition, the coalition, wanting to split the bill, we saw them wanting to play silly bugger with it and not really operating in the best interest of what the wheat board itself voted to put through.”
Opposition MPs dispute Ritz’s version of events. Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter insists government house leader Jay Hill never proposed to bring C-27 forward to start debate.
Ritz said he wants to find space on the Commons agenda in the fall to debate the bill.
“We don’t see anything scary in that legislation and it was good for farmers all the way around,” he said.
“We want real farmers supporting and voting on the wheat board election. The wheat board ratified that, as did most of the farm industry groups, other than our friends in the NFU.”
Ritz said he believes opposition MPs who fight Conservative CWB reforms will hurt the board over time.
“It’s really unfortunate that the opposition can’t get it through their heads that we have to start making the wheat board more responsive to actual farmers on the ground,” he said. “Otherwise, the wheat board’s own intransigence and the opposition’s silly bugger tactics are going to put increasing pressure on the wheat board to be gone completely And we don’t want to see that.”
Critics insist the real problem is the government’s ideological opposition to the CWB monopoly and its repeated attempts to undermine the board despite majority farmer support for the idea that farmers should decide the wheat board’s future.
