OTTAWA – A Reform MP last week suggested the Western Grain Marketing Panel may be a vehicle established to support the pro-Canadian Wheat Board views of agriculture minister Ralph Goodale.
At a Commons committee meeting, Elwin Hermanson told Saskatoon lawyer Tom Molloy, chosen by Goodale to chair the panel, that farmers are suspicious because he has long ties to both the minister and the Liberal party.
“In light of that, how can I as a farmer be confident there will not be ministerial manipulation?” Saskatchewan MP Hermanson asked, after stressing he was not questioning Molloy’s intentions or ability.
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Molloy noted there are eight other panelists, not all of whom share Goodale’s pro-board views. Their credibility also will be on the line, he said.
“The only way to judge the independence will have to be (after the fact).”
In its final report to the minister next summer, he said the panel will report what it has heard, where it believes there are areas of agreement and what it thinks should be done in areas where there is no agreement.
Molloy appeared before the Commons agriculture committee to explain to MPs the workings of the panel, recently established to examine a broad range of grain marketing issues, policies and institutions.
He said the first phase was to prepare a fact base which can be used as the basis for hearings and discussion. It has been distributed across the Prairies.
In January, a series of meetings is scheduled to be held across the Prairies, followed by more formal hearings and a time to allow farmers or groups to send in views to the panel directly if they do not want to appear in public.
He said a final report, with advice to the agriculture minister on how to organize grain marketing, will be completed by June.
He said the panel will try to guard against having public meetings stacked and manipulated by any group with a position on the sensitive marketing questions.
Molloy, a lawyer with more than a decade of experience as a federal native land claims negotiator, said the panel will cross-examine mythologies about grain marketing.
He said the panel is expected to cost $1.6 million.
