CARDSTON, Alta. – Conservative MP Rick Casson doesn’t see it as a vote-deciding issue, but he concedes it has caused his party problems in rural prairie ridings this election.
Why did Conservative MPs refuse to allow Parliament to levy fines against major packing companies this spring after the companies were found in contempt of Parliament?
“There is so much angst out here that many people have questions about it,” the Conservative MP and election candidate in Lethbridge riding said in a June 16 interview.
“They see it as an opportunity lost. I’m telling them it was just an opportunity delayed. We will return to this in the next Parliament.”
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Earlier, at a mid-afternoon meeting organized by local cattle ranchers angry about the continuing impact of the BSE, Casson sounded almost contrite.
“Maybe our reasoning wasn’t that sound but at the time, we felt that the industry was being manipulated and the Liberals were pre-election politicking,” said the two-term MP, whose riding has been the most affected by BSE.
“Our commitment is that when we get back to Ottawa, we will get the committee working again and we will ask the industry minister to order the Competition Bureau to look at beef pricing in Canada.”
On May 13, the Commons agriculture committee recommended Cargill and Tyson-owned Lakeside Packers be fined $250,000 per day until they produced financial evidence about profits and margins since BSE struck.
The Conservatives denied the required unanimous consent and even though the election call would have killed the fines after just two days, their critics have been trying to paint them as protectors of the packers.
“Conservatives support meat packers over farmers,” Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar NDP candidate Dennis Gruending said in a pre-election News release
news and he has been hammering the message home to voters of his central Saskatchewan riding ever since.
In the Medicine Hat riding in southeastern Alberta, both New Democrat Betty Stroh and Liberal Bill Cocks used the issue to assail incumbent Monte Solberg during an all-candidates radio debate June 16.
“This is a very good issue for me,” Cocks said in a later interview. “The Conservatives have been making hay about Liberal accountability and the investigation into the sponsorship program but here we have a case where the Conservatives did not want to get to the bottom of where more than $1 billion in BSE money went.”
Different Conservative candidates have been handling the criticisms in different ways but there are common themes.
The Liberals were grandstanding, they say.
It was a Liberal decision to dissolve Parliament before the agriculture committee could get to the bottom of the issue of BSE money.
They also challenge whether the committee of politicians was the best place to pursue the issue.
However, the agriculture committee unanimously asked the Competition Bureau to examine the issue of excess profit taking but the bureau said it had no authority to do so.
Meanwhile, Conservative agriculture critic Gerry Ritz also has been working to put out the fire.
He has told all candidates across the country to let him know if there are voter questions or complaints about the issue. If necessary, he calls the voters directly.
“I’ve made 10 or 12 calls across the country,” he said in early June. “When I explain what happened and the games the Liberals were playing, they understand. We would have gotten to the bottom of this if the House had stayed in session.
“Then we would have had a debate and perhaps the fines would have been levied if the companies did not comply with the request.
“By dissolving the House, the Liberals gave the packers a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”
Ritz also promised the new Parliament will again tackle the issue of where BSE payments went.
“It will be raised again and we’re still going to get to see the books, definitely.”
