In the end, the final word in the House of Commons debate over Canadian Wheat Board reforms went to Manitoba Reform MP Jake Hoeppner, who waged a long political campaign against the board monopoly and practices.
Just after 11 p.m. June 10, Hoeppner was asked by a fellow Reformer why the Liberals were “imposing their will upon unwilling grain farmers.”
It beats me, said the MP. “Politically, what is being done is dumb. The Liberal caucus will not gain any votes by doing what it is doing.”
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Seventeen hours later, after legislation had been approved by a Commons vote of 197-60, Canadian Wheat Board minister Ralph Goodale had a different explanation.
He spent most of the past three years trying to get legislation approved in order to give farmers more control over the wheat board, Goodale said.
“I’m glad the process has been thorough and comprehensive. But I’m also glad that the process is now complete and we can get on with the democratic reform of the Canadian Wheat Board which farmers have indicated very clearly they would like to have.”
The road to the June 11 vote was a long and winding one for Goodale.
In June 1995 he launched the process by appointing the Western Grain Marketing Panel. A year later it reported with a recommendation that farmers have a say in picking the board of directors and that the CWB lose its monopoly over barley exports into the United States.
Goodale picked some of the recommendations but rejected the open border proposal. He introduced legislation to democratize the board and to give it more operating flexibility while retaining the wheat and barley export monopoly.
Reform fought it. The legislation did not make it through Parliament before the 1997 election and Reform won all but one of the predominantly rural prairie seats.
Goodale came back with similar legislation last September and after public Senate hearings, political battles and amendment, the bill finally made it through Parliament last week.
In the end, the Liberals, Bloc QuŽbecois and Progressive Conservatives supported the bill. Reform opposed it because it did not go far enough in making the board voluntary. The NDP opposed it because it went too far.
“These amendments are going in the right direction but they do not go far enough as far as western Canadian farmers are concerned,” Hoeppner said during debate.
NDP agriculture spokesperson Dick Proctor saw a glass half empty because new board flexibility to buy grain outside the pool will undermine it.
Conservative spokesperson Rick Borotsik said the PCs support a voluntary board but they backed the legislation as an interim step toward more farmer choice.
In the end, the vote in Parliament was as raucous as it sometimes was in the country.
Late one night, a Liberal MP was located in a pub, well into an evening of celebrating, and told to return to the House to speak a bit more forcefully than usual.
During the final night, Alberta Reform MP Myron Thompson invited a heckling Liberal into a backroom to call one of his anti-wheat board constituents. He wondered if the Liberals would ever understand. “Maybe if a guy went over and gave them a shot in the head, they would understand something.”
