In a vote that the Conservative minority decried as partisan, the House of Commons agriculture committee last week urged the government to reverse the January appointment of Elwin Hermanson as chief commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission.
The Conservative government and agriculture minister Gerry Ritz almost certainly will ignore the committee majority advice.
The opposition’s main complaint is that Hermanson, a former Reform party MP, Saskatchewan Party leader and constituency worker for agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, is too close to the Conservative government to be an independent advocate for farmers.
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The major piece of evidence was Hermanson’s February article in the opinion pages of The Western Producer embracing proposals by Ritz to amend the Canada Grain Act in ways that would diminish the grain commission focus on protecting farmer rights. It would also reduce mandatory inspections of grain moving from inland to export position and eliminate several hundred jobs.
Opposition MPs complained that by embracing the proposals contained in Bill C-39 while it still is a piece of contentious legislation before Parliament, Hermanson was exposing his Conservative bias.
“The record of this government is absolutely clear: anybody who stands up to the prime minister is fired,” said Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter during a March 13 hearing with Hermanson as the witness. “What we need in these positions, as chief commissioner of the grain commission or the head of the Canadian nuclear regulatory authority or head of the Canadian Wheat Board, we need people who are going to be strongly independent of the government.”
The CWB president and nuclear regulator head were fired after crossing swords with government priorities.
Easter said Hermanson’s public embrace of the government legislation “leads me to believe that this chief commissioner would be more of a spokesman for the government than an independent regulator.”
Conservative MPs were able to slip into the debate a reference to the Liberal connections of former CGC chief commissioner Chris Hamblin.
For his part, Hermanson insisted his political connections had nothing to do with his appointment to a job that pays more than $204,000 annually.
He insisted his newspaper article was suggested by senior grain commission managers when he was appointed.
Hermanson told MPs the article had served its purpose of introducing him to farmers and reassuring them that government proposals would not undermine the grain quality assurance system.
He said his political connections to Ritz had no impact on his appointment.
“My appointment was not made on the basis of my relationship with the minister,” he told New Democrat MP Alex Atamanenko. “It was based on the qualifications that I was required to have. Quite frankly, I think I rate pretty highly on all of those qualifications.”
