A Conservative MP and perennial critic of the Canadian Wheat Board says Elections Canada should oversee future CWB elections.
Even before a challenge in Federal Court that delayed the board’s election result announcement, southern Saskatchewan MP David Anderson had called for an independent inquiry into how the 2004 election was conducted.
Critics have complained about incomplete or altered voters lists and other irregularities.
“I think after four elections, the wheat board has shown that it cannot be trusted to run a clean or competent election,” Anderson said Dec. 9. “I think someone else should do it. Elections Canada is the group with the most experience and the most credibility in this process. I think the government should designate it as the organization to do this.”
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Anderson noted that some critics have suggested the CWB may have been complicit in the irregularities and perhaps has not been neutral during the process.
“I think the only way to bring credibility to the process is to have a neutral, outside party do a review,” he said in a statement issued from his Ottawa office. “It’s time to make changes.”
Last week, Anderson also scored a victory on another front in what he says is an effort to keep the board accountable.
He convinced a majority of members on the House of Commons agriculture committee to demand internal documents from the board that will shed light on the CWB decision to give grants and forgivable loans worth $155,000 to the Farmer Rail Car Coalition.
Anderson said he expects those documents will be delivered to the committee by the last week of January when MPs reassemble after their Christmas break.
“This is money out of the pool account and most farmers didn’t know about it,” said Anderson. “The FRCC is a lobby project and I’m not sure it is within the mandate of the wheat board to be supporting that. I think its mandate is to market grain.”
CWB director and Saskatchewan farmer Dwayne Anderson said in an interview the board had the right to do it and it was a good deal for the farmers it represents.
He said the existence of the FRCC has led the railways to reduce rail freight rates from what they could have been during the past year.
And the FRCC, by promising to spend no more than $1,500 annually maintaining each of the hopper cars it wants to acquire from the government, has sparked a debate about the fact that the existing formula used by the railways to determine freight rates includes a maintenance cost allowance almost three times that.
He said the railways have been charging farmers more than they had to for maintenance.
“I think it (the money for the FRCC) was a good investment,” said the CWB director. “We saved western Canadian farmers a bunch of money by helping to get this thing started.”
