Willard Estey, the author of a controversial proposal to remove the Canadian Wheat Board from the grain transportation system, called the government’s response to his report “a hopeless mess.”
He also told MPs they had little choice but to vote for it, since it promises $178 million in freight rate relief to farmers, an inducement he later referred to as blackmail.
“I think I’d vote for it,” he said when asked what MPs should do. “You’re boxed in … You don’t have any elbow room to make any changes.”
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The retired Supreme Court chief justice told MPs on the House of Commons transport committee that the grain transportation legislation making its way through Parliament will not solve problems in the system.
And rather than reduce or eliminate CWB involvement in the system, he agreed with Canadian Alliance MP Lee Morrison that the new rules actually give the wheat board a more ingrained role.
“I think you’re absolutely right,” Estey said during an appearance before MPs that left most of them singing his praises and crowding around to shake his hand. “It may not be intended but that’s what it does.”
His assessment of how the Liberals have dealt with his report was sharp, critical and disdainful.
Estey opened his hearing with a long, at times rambling, detailed and often witty anecdotal history of his 1998 commission, the history of the grain transportation snafus of the past and why he recommended what he did. The 80-year-old Saskatoon native made it clear he thinks the wheat board has outlived its usefulness as a grain marketer.
And it certainly should not be a player in the organization and allocation of grain cars, he said. Its presence creates barriers to efficient commercial dealings.
“You can’t worship at one altar and pray at another,” he said.
Estey complained that the government’s changes will not allow the Canadian rail industry to strengthen itself to compete with the Americans.
Most MPs at the committee, harboring their own doubts about the government’s bill, were reverential in their questions to Estey.
CA MP Roy Bailey asked him how he feels about the fact that the government had commissioned him to solve a problem and then all but ignored his key advice.
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” he replied to MP guffaws. “They may be right. There is always that one percent chance.”
Only Liberal MP and wheat board defender Wayne Easter challenged Estey directly.
After offering a defence of the CWB, Easter said he was surprised Estey seemed to harbor such negative attitudes.
“The farmers need some agency in the system to look out for their interests,” said Easter.
New Democrat Dick Proctor also defended the board as an agency that can negotiate “eyeball to eyeball” with the railways on farmers’ behalf, but his questions were not as challenging.
Estey did not back down. He said the board was a “godsend” for farmers in the 1930s and 1940s but began to lose its relevance through the 1960s and 1970s.
He said other farm commodities such as canola are successfully marketed outside the wheat board.
“Why should the government of Canada be involved in selling grain?” he wondered. “It isn’t involved in selling anything else.”
