The growing likelihood of a June federal election throws into serious doubt whether the Liberal government will be able to make good on its promise to reform the Canadian Wheat Board this year.
It is a simple matter of timing.
An election on June 2 or June 9, as Liberal insiders are speculating, would have to be called the last week of April or in the early days of May.
Parliament would be dissolved that day and all legislation awaiting approval would die. The Liberals have left themselves little time to get the wheat board reform bill through the legislative hoops.
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“If they think this wheat board bill will be through all stages and the Senate by the end of April, they’re dreaming,” a well-connected Liberal MP familiar with the wheat board legislation said last week.
Heat is on
Even agriculture minister Ralph Goodale, who has made wheat board reform the centrepiece of the last half of his term, concedes an early election would put pressure on that commitment to prairie farmers.
“The time is obviously tight but this is a priority for the government,” he said late last week. “If we ultimately are faced with a massive opposition filibuster, and I hope that’s not the case, then theoretically it would be a risk that they could delay the legislation beyond the point of no return. If that happened, we would pick it up just as rapidly as possible (after an election).”
But failure to pass wheat board legislation before an election would delay reform and creation of a majority farmer board of directors well into next year at least, depending on the priorities of the next government and the next agriculture minister.
And an opposition filibuster is not the real enemy of the wheat board bill, since this government rarely has let opposition MPs debate controversial bills for more than a few hours before imposing closure to end the debate.
The real enemy is the shortage of time and the government decision to leave it until the late stages of the Parliament.
Legislation to create a partially elected wheat board with a new corporate structure and more market flexibility is now before the Commons agriculture committee.
The committee holds hearings through the West next week but with the House of Commons taking a two-week break ending April 7, the committee will not complete Ottawa hearings and clause-by-clause study until sometime the week of April 14, committee chair Lyle Vanclief said last week.
That would leave just two weeks of parliamentary time before an early election call and the wheat board bill would be competing with other government priority bills.
Once reported by the committee, the bill will have to go through clause-by-clause debate in the Commons, where amendments will be presented and debated by the opposition and the government.
Then, another day will have to be set aside for final Commons debate and third reading approval.
The bill then would go to the Senate where the same stages are required.
With a bill as controversial as wheat board reform, there will be pressure from some senators to hold at least a day or two of committee hearings.
“Goodale has frittered away a lot of time,” Reform MP Elwin Hermanson said last week. “They could use closure but I’m still not sure they could get it through. The Liberals very well may have to go to the people with one of its major promises unfulfilled.”
