Excerpts from the Feb. 17 House of Commons debate amending the Canadian Wheat Board Act
Ralph Goodale (minister of natural resources and minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to open this third reading debate on Bill C-4, an act to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act, a set of proposals which will bring about the biggest changes in the Canadian Wheat Board in more than 50 years. …
Our first 18 months in government were devoted to successfully defending Canadian grain trade against unwarranted attacks from south of the border. Then in the summer of 1995 we set up the western grain marketing panel to bring some focus to a prairie grain marketing argument that was generating far more heat than light.
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This was the commencement of a consultative process which was probably the most exhaustive and exhausting in the history of the western grains industry. Countless meetings, hearings, seminars, surveys, focus groups, questionnaires, votes, pamphlets, petitions, faxes, e-mails, Internet messages, personal and public letters and good old-fashioned phone calls. More people had more opportunity to participate in this very public and transparent process than ever before, and literally thousands did so.
All the advice we received was valuable, but much of it was conflicting. The most vocal participants in the debate exposed sharply polarized views among different groups of farmers with little scope for consensus in between. … Bill C-4 represents an honest attempt to find some reasonable common ground. It safeguards our grain marketing strengths. …
Bill C-4 also responds to a strong desire among farmers for Canadian Wheat Board modernization and change. It democratizes the wheat board’s governance. It deepens the wheat board’s accountability. It enhances the wheat board’s flexibility, creating more options and speeding up cash flows. It empowers producers with greater control over what their marketing agency does and does not do.
That is what Bill C-4 is all about, putting farmers in the driver’s seat like never before. It follows close to three years of sincere effort to try to accommodate competing points of view.
The debate has been intense, and that is not surprising. It is perfectly normal for farmers and farm organizations to hold strong views about grain marketing legislation and to express themselves vigorously. That is their right.
But it is regrettable that some totally extraneous lobby groups, non-farmers in effect, have attempted to pervert the legitimate debate about Bill C-4 with a grossly irresponsible disinformation campaign. The worst has been the National Citizens’ Coalition, a non-farm group of well-heeled right wingers led by a fallen Reformer who wouldn’t know a bushel of barley from a bucket of rice. It has spent tens of thousands of dollars disseminating false and misleading propaganda.
The NCC’s latest ideological abuse has been an absolutely indecent attempt to link the Canadian Wheat Board to the internment of Japanese persons during the Second World War. That notion is utterly abhorrent. It betrays the NCC’s true intent and that of those who would associate with the NCC in a mindless crusade, financed handsomely in secret to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board and to settle for nothing less.
The NCC’s tactics try to make a virtue of knee-jerk extremism and intolerance. I have no intention of dignifying its allegations with any reasoned response.
Where I do want to concentrate is on those legitimate questions which come from genuine farmers who want to know what Bill C-4 will mean to them. …
Will the Canadian Wheat Board become more accountable to farmers? The answer is emphatically yes.
For the first time in its history the Canadian Wheat Board will be run by a board of directors. There will be 15 directors in total. Farmers will take control over their marketing agency by directly electing 10 of those directors, a two-thirds majority. The elected directors will reflect the views of farmers in CWB decision making. They will be expected to demonstrate accountability to producers because ultimately if producers are not satisfied with what the CWB is doing, they can change those director … .
If the directors are not satisfied with any aspect of CWB operations, they will be able to make the necessary changes, including the introduction of flexible new marketing tools such as cash trading, expedited adjustment payments and early pool cash outs. The directors will be in charge and they will decide, not the babbling baboons in the Reform party. …
The CWB is obviously a commercial operation. As such it makes reasonable sense for its auditor to be drawn from the private sector. Also, where you can make a case for the auditor general to scrutinize the accounts of government departments and agencies which regularly spend public money appropriated by Parliament, the Canadian Wheat Board does not represent a regular draw upon the public purse. Its funds come from its grain sales and that money belongs to farmers, not the government. …
Is it necessary for the government to appoint some directors and the president? The answer is yes for two reasons.
First, Canadian taxpayers backstop the CWB with financial guarantees totaling as much as $6 billion annually, covering not only initial payments and credit sales but also, unlike any other marketing agency, the Canadian Wheat Board’s general borrowings. Second, the wheat board is responsible for issuing all wheat and barley export licences for all of Canada, not just the Prairies. Therefore, it performs a national function.
The appointed directors, five in total, will have no special power or status. They will be selected to bring additional expertise to the board of directors which might not otherwise be available internally. Such appointments are quite common in both the public sector and the private sector. …
Does the Canadian Wheat Board need a contingency fund? The answer is yes.
To provide more flexibility on how farmers are paid for their grain and to speed up cash flows, the CWB’s board of directors will have the power to authorize cash purchases of wheat or barley; to authorize adjustments to increase initial payments quickly just as soon as market conditions warrant and without waiting for government approval; and to authorize an option allowing individuals to cash out of a marketing pool early before the end of the crop year. The directors would implement these new flexibility tools when in their good judgment it would be beneficial to farmers to do so.
But as with all new innovations, there could be some new financial risks. Like an insurance policy to serve as a safeguard against any such unforeseen new risks, the directors need the ability to develop a contingency fund. The law will specify that such a fund could be used only in relation to the three purposes mentioned above.
It would then be up to the board of directors, which includes a two-thirds majority elected by farmers, to decide if, when and how to create it. In any event the Government of Canada will continue to guarantee the CWB’s initial payments set at the start of the crop year, its credit sales and its general borrowings. …
Can farmers get a crop removed from the CWB’s jurisdiction? The answer under Bill C-4 is yes.
The new law will contain an exclusion clause to allow any kind, type, class or grade of wheat or barley to be removed in whole or in part from the CWB’s jurisdiction. To trigger it, the directors would first have to vote in favor of the idea. Second, for quality control reasons, a system would need to be in place to prevent any mixing of the excluded grain with CWB grain. Third, if the directors considered any proposed exclusion to be significant, a democratic producer vote would be needed to approve it. …
Can farmers get a crop added to the CWB’s jurisdiction if that is their will? The answer again under Bill C-4 is yes.
As a matter of fairness and balance, just as there is an exclusion clause, there will also be an inclusion clause in the new law. The deciding factor in relation to both clauses will be the majority preference of the actual producers of the grain in question as expressed through a democratic vote of those producers. They will be in control.
The existence of an inclusion clause does not by itself change the CWB’s mandate. It merely sets out a clear procedure for doing so if and only if producers themselves, not politicians or lobbyists, believe such a change is in their best interests. The inclusion clause would be available only for crops that currently come within the definition of grain in the existing CWB act.
Neither the government nor the CWB nor any minority interest group could trigger the process. Only the producers of the grain in question could do so in the form of a written request from a legitimate organization whose membership consists solely of the producers of that grain.
The request would have to be advertised publicly, leaving at least 120 days for the farm community and others to react. The CWB’s board of directors, which includes a two-thirds majority elected by farmers, would then consider the request. The directors would need to examine all of the implications of such a move, including among other things the costs of an inclusion, trade or commercial consequences and the public comments received.
If the directors ultimately agreed with the request for an inclusion, the whole matter would then have to be put to a democratic vote among the producers of the grain in question for their decision and ratification. … The authority and the power would be in the hands of farmers, where it belongs. …
JAY HILL (Prince George-Peace River, Ref.):
… Currently there are 59 members in the Reform party caucus. About half our caucus or 30 of them have farm backgrounds. They grew up on farms. They have friends and family members actively farming in Western Canada. At least half of those, or 15 to 20 members, were actively farming before coming to this place. Some of them were very large commercial farm operations and enterprises.
It angers me when we are constantly bombarded from the government benches that somehow we do not have any credibility, that we are the enemies of the Canadian Wheat Board, that we want to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board. This is the type of nonsense that we listen to on a daily basis and have been listening to for a year and a half. …
Leon E. Benoit (Lakeland, Ref.): … Often, Reform has been accused of being against the wheat board. That is completely untrue. We have been desperately trying to change the wheat board so that it does not become a completely obsolete body, so that it does not become a body that really has no value at all to western Canadian farmers.
The wheat board provides a valuable service to western Canadian farmers. I would believe that every member of our party, and I cannot speak for all of them but I have certainly talked to them, believes the wheat board provides a useful service to western Canadian farmers. Therefore that is not the issue.
Reform is trying to change the wheat board so that it is a much more useful body to Canadian farmers, the people it really concerns. Western Canadian farmers are the only farmers who are affected to any great extent by the Canadian Wheat Board Act. They are in fact the farmers who pay for the operation of the wheat board.
Again, the real debate revolves around the monopoly of the wheat board.
It revolves around accountability or lack of accountability of the wheat board. It revolves around the openness or lack of openness of the wheat board and around the very basic question of whose grain is it anyway. …
The opposition comes from all sides of this issue.
I will read … parts of a letter from the wheat board advisory committee which is also against this legislation although it favors the monopoly: “We think change is necessary, but Bill C-4 closes doors on options and it should be withdrawn.”
Even the wheat board advisory committee calls for the withdrawal of this legislation. That is how bad this legislation is. It goes on to say “The government has spent millions of dollars to arrive at this point and it is our clear view that these changes have the potential to very quickly destroy the Canadian Wheat Board.” This is from the advisory committee.
Is the intent of this minister to destroy the wheat board? Is the minister approaching this issue in an underhanded way to try to destroy the board? …
DICK PROCTOR (Palliser, NDP):
… Why do farmers support the wheat board?
Quite simply it is because the CWB has 60 years of international experience and is recognized as one of the top grain marketing organizations in the world. The western grain marketing panel asked representatives of grain marketing countries to rank their major grain exporters. What it found is that the CWB in Canada ranked number one in the world for marketing the highest quality of wheat at the best price.
Farmers, therefore, by and large support the wheat board. The New Democrats join them in that support. However, Bill C-4 is a badly flawed piece of legislation that will serve to undermine the board, which is why we are opposing these changes.
How does it undermine the board? For one thing, Bill C-4 will propose cash buying. We believe that this will undermine a fundamental pillar of the wheat board and thereby undermine farmer confidence in it. …
Under the terms of Bill C-4 the wheat board will be able to buy grains from anyone, anywhere, at any time and at any price. This disrupts the board’s long practice of buying grain from farmers at announced prices and distributing profits to all on an equitable basis.
Second, Bill C-4 proposes a contingency fund which could cost farmers as much as $570 million in checkoffs. The fund is not needed. Farmers cannot afford it. They do not generally understand that this is going to impact on them and they sure as heck are not going to like it when they find out that it does impact on them. …
JAKE E. HOEPPNER
(Portage-Lisgar, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to listen to the debate. If the honorable member for Palliser believes so strongly in a monopoly, why should we not create a housing monopoly so that everybody would live in houses owned by the government and would pay it for that?
That is the way some communist countries have gone. Would the member agree that is the way to go? If one monopoly is so good for one sector, why not have them all under monopolies? …
Why not a monopoly on lawyer services or teachers? Why not turn the country into something that is prosperous like we have seen communist countries become? Are they right on the world scene today? If it were not for capitalists like us they would all be starving to death. Is that the kind of system the member wants? …
RICK BOROTSIK (Brandon-Souris, PC): … Anybody who has any dealing with the private sector, with private business, knows that a single CEO or manager or owner is the best and only management for a corporation. Instead of having a commissioner form of government where there are up to five commissioners making the law or rules for the board, the government said it will have one individual to be the CEO, a very good move.
Unfortunately it did not go far enough because it said it would appoint that CEO. It was the wrong thing to do. The government was almost there, but it did not go far enough. We now have a chief executive officer of the Canadian Wheat Board to be appointed by government.
Then we go to the board of directors. The government was almost there. It said very emphatically and passionately that this board is to be controlled by the farmers, the producers. It is a farmer-producer board. But it did not go far enough.
There are 15 members on the board, 10 elected and five appointed by government.
If the government really believes in what it says, all 15 members should have been elected and the CEO should have been appointed by the board. Then it would have been truly accountable to the producers it is supposed to be working for.
There was an amendment I cannot believe the government turned down. It came from the Reform party and me. It said simply that the corporation should be working for the farmers. The corporation will be working for the producers. The government turned it down. The corporation is working for the corporation, not for those producers the government says it wants it to represent. I cannot believe it turned that amendment down. …
Wayne Easter
(parliamentary secretary to minister of fisheries and oceans, Lib.): … The honorable member for Brandon-Souris began his remarks by talking about free enterprise. He believes in free enterprise and he believes in choice. Let me submit to him that if he believes in choice, why is he opposing the inclusion clause? That gives producers a choice other than the Winnipeg commodity exchange and the open market.
The fact is the Canadian Wheat Board is making the free enterprise system work to the advantage of Canadian producers. It is collective selling. In any market the lowest seller sets the price. The Canadian Wheat Board is ensuring that Canadian producers do not compete against each other in the international marketplace. As a result, the returns are pooled and the maximized returns are given to the producers. That is good marketing management. I am surprised that members opposite do not support good marketing management. …
Rick Borotsik: … If it is the best marketer ever and if it gets the best price ever, every producer will continue to be a customer of the Canadian Wheat Board. What is the member afraid of? If it is that good, it should be able to compete. …
Roy Bailey (Souris-Moose Mountain, Ref.): … Does the minister realize that every MP elected to the House whose majority of constituents come from the rural wheat producing area, with the exception of one, will be voting against the bill? Does that not make any difference to the government opposite? …
Jake E. Hoeppner (Portage-Lisgar, Ref.): … I got a document from the wheat board last weekend showing how much management deadwood is on that board. Out of 454 employees, there are 130 some with management titles. I can list them, every single one, if members want to know. There are 131 management people who are probably eligible for a huge pension and a severance package. …
If this bill is implemented the way it is, it sets at risk every marketing scheme in this country. It sets at risk every RRSP plan. It sets at risk every pension plan. Everything can be confiscated if this is the type of bill we are going to pass in this House. …
Gerry Byrne (parliamentary secretary to minister of natural resources, Lib.): … Entities such as the Export Development Corporation and Canada Post are also not covered by the Access to Information Act. However the reasons for this situation are logical and well founded, contrary to the allegations that some groups have been making to the media lately about this particular issue.
The Canadian Wheat Board was not included in the schedule of the Access to Information Act so that the wheat board operations and records would not be subject to significantly greater levels of public access and scrutiny, not from the farmers, but from the private sector grain companies against which it must compete. Information in the hands of competitors can be quite dangerous. Information in the hands of farmers, which is what it will be when the board of directors is elected by the farmers, is quite helpful. That is a good change.
This is not to say that the Canadian Wheat Board is an entirely closed shop. The Canadian Wheat Board is audited every year by one of the country’s largest and most respected private sector accounting firms. …
The question of whether salaries of individual employees should be made public has been an issue not only with the Canadian Wheat Board, but with many other Canadian and U.S. companies. In arriving at a solution to this question it is necessary to weigh an individual’s right to privacy.
However, while there are no specific salary figures given, the salary ranges for all employees are available to farmers on request. …
Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton-Melville, Ref.):
… There is a way to solve the dilemma this government is in. Government members are saying that the support we say we have for our amendments is not there, that the opposition to Bill C-4 is not there.
Put Bill C-4 to the test. Put it before farmers. Let them vote on it. There is no need to rush this through. We have until the fall before the directors will be put in place. Support our Reform amendment and let farmers tell this government directly what they think of Bill C-4. Why not do that? Is it not a good thing to do? It affects them. …
Lee Morrison (Cypress Hills-Grasslands, Ref.): Madam Speaker, the honorable parliamentary secretary should read the Access to Information Act before he starts making reference to it in the House. He should know well that any commercially sensitive information, for it matters not what department or organization, is protected and privileged. If you put in an application for access to information and it has any immediate commercial aspect, you will get a bunch of blank papers or you will get papers with whiteout. …
Chris Axworthy (Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, NDP): … Why would the Reform party be opposed to farmers making $265 million a year more than they would by using the private grain trade? The Reform party, being ideologues, being neo-conservatives, wants to make sure the private grain traders who support it so well and support it financially and support it in its arguments with regard to the wheat board make more money, rather than the farmers. We know that the wheat board ships that profit that it makes back to the farmers. …
Let us look at who wants to get rid of the wheat board. It is not Canadian farmers, as I have said, because they have consistently supported the board. It is the kind of people, the kind of big business, the kind of anti-farmer interest that supports the Reform party in all of its endeavors.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the commodity exchange in Winnipeg, Cargill, these kinds of corporations stand to gain by farmers’ not having the wheat board on their side. …
Larry McCormick (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, Lib.): … I have heard the question asked about why the Canadian wheat board is not legally obliged to get the best price for farmers’ grain. The Canadian wheat board seeks to obtain the best price possible as a matter of policy. However, making this the corporation’s legal objective would be difficult.
Because the CWB seeks to obtain the best price for producers jointly through the pool accounts, it would almost always be possible to show after the fact that somewhat higher returns could have been realized for individual producers had a different set of marketing decisions been made. Therefore, to make the CWB legally responsible to achieve the best price for individual farmer’s grain would result in countless legal challenges respecting the board’s marketing decisions.
Looking to the future, the board of directors would be responsible for ensuring that the sales program is well managed and that the Canadian wheat board operates in the best interests of producers. This would be preferable to taking a legalistic approach. …
Ronald J. Duhamel (secretary of state, western economic diversification, Lib.): … Some people have expressed the concern that cash purchases will undermine the Canadian Wheat Board. It should be remembered, however, that such measures come under the authority of the board of directors, which is controlled by farmers, and that there is thus a safety mechanism. …
Gerry Byrne (parliamentary secretary to minister of natural resources, Lib.): … Would the Reform party view it as fair to have one enterprise benefiting from special government guarantees competing with the private sector companies which must risk their own capital or would the Reform party want to see the Canadian Wheat Board and farmers no longer benefit from these guarantees? …
John Harvard
(parliamentary-secretary to minister of agriculture, Lib.): … With respect to the organization and operational tools of the Canadian Wheat Board, Bill C-4 follows very closely the recommendations of the Western Grain Marketing Panel.
With respect to the panel’s recommendations on jurisdiction for wheat and barley marketing, the bill puts in place a full democratic process for farmers to make those decisions themselves, and I underline ‘themselves.’
As members can see, contrary to what the official opposition has claimed, we have in fact followed the recommendations of the Western Grain Marketing Panel very closely. …
Allan Kerpan (Blackstrap, Ref.): … A fellow came into my office when I was the member for Moose Jaw-Lake Centre in the last parliament. He said he had a pile of durum on his ground in his yard, about 10,000 bushels. He said he could take that durum across the line and get $8 a bushel for it. In Canada there was no market at that point in time to sell that durum. He asked what he was supposed to do. He said he was going broke, that if he did not sell the durum he would most likely lose his farm. He asked if he should take it across the line. …
There are 3,500 in my province who are in arrears to the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation. More farmers will probably go bankrupt this year than have in the last two or three years put together. That is what I would consider the edge of disaster for agriculture in Saskatchewan.
