In light of his decision to tell farmers in his southwestern Saskatchewan riding to support anti-monopoly candidates in the Canadian Wheat Board election, Conservative MP David Anderson is under intense attack in the House of Commons.
Speaker Peter Milliken is considering a complaint lodged by Liberal Wayne Easter. Parliamentary ethics commissioner Mary Dawson has received a similar complaint from New Democrat Pat Martin.
Last week, Anderson remained unrepentant and defiant. Other prairie rural Conservative MPs also sent out letters to their farmer constituents.
He accused his critics of being out of touch with farm opinion on the issue.
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“We will be standing up for western Canadian farmers,” he said Nov. 27.
“We are going to be bringing them marketing choice as soon as possible.”
Liberal critic Easter appealed to the speaker Nov. 27 to find Anderson in breach of Commons rules by using his parliamentary letterhead and the MP privilege of free postage to write a partisan letter to his farmers.
Without offering any proof, Easter suggested that Anderson may have used his position as parliamentary secretary for the Canadian Wheat Board to get access to the CWB voter’s list.
He said the Conservative MP was undermining the fairness of the CWB election by his partisan intervention.
Anderson accused Easter of being selective in his condemnation of perceived bias in the board election.
The Liberal MP did not raise his voice when a pro-monopoly candidate used the CWB logo in his campaign material, said Anderson.
“I have not heard anything from him when the Canadian Wheat Board has been banning reporters it does not like from its news conferences.”
Earlier at a hastily called news conference, New Democrat CWB critic Martin filed a complaint alleging that Anderson’s letter to farmers broke the Commons ethics code by using his office to promote the private gain of himself or a third party.
Martin argued that by endorsing specific candidates for the CWB board, Anderson was promoting their private interest.
In the Commons, Anderson fired back, accusing the NDP of ignoring farmer interests by not asking questions when the CWB collected a buyback fee from organic growers “for doing nothing” and of asking no questions when the CWB lost $35 million in its contingency fund last year “(and) this year they have apparently lost more money.”
