VANCOUVER – The NDP may not agree on whether to reject its socialist label or welcome Liberals, but party members are united in their fight to save the Canadian Wheat Board.
NDP leader Jack Layton said in a June 17 interview during the party’s national convention in Vancouver that all of his MPs are concerned with the Conservatives’ plans to abolish the board’s single desk.
He also confirmed that his 58 Quebec MPs are on board, vowing the Quebec wing will fight to save the prairie institution and let farmers have a say in the board’s future.
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Rookie NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice, representing the Montreal riding of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, said the CWB isn’t a Quebec issue, but it is important to people across the country.
“We want to maintain the wheat board, show solidarity with farmers in the West,” said Boulerice, a former journalist, adviser to the Canadian Union of Public Employees and onetime separatist.
The CWB resolution made it to the convention floor June 17 after it had been discussed earlier in the day at a delegates-only session.
The resolution, submitted by the Wascana riding in Saskatchewan, had read:
“That the New Democratic Party call on the federal government to support the democratic rights of farmers to determine the direction of the Canadian Wheat Board, and preserve and strengthen the Canadian Wheat Board’s position as a single-desk marketer.”
The resolution passed unanimously.
Crystal Palmer from Wascana summed up the sentiment among the 1,500 delegates: “Farmers stand to lose if the Canadian Wheat Board is abolished. Only large corporations and corporate farmers gain.”
Nettie Wiebe, four-time federal NDP candidate, said there’s no need to hand over the important industry to the trans-national sector.
A key point for delegates was that farmers should decide the fate of the CWB in a vote.
