The Senate agriculture committee heads west in less than two weeks for hearings on Canadian Wheat Board reform and all sides are talking about amendments.
Hearings open March 24 in Brandon, Man., move to Regina the next day and Saskatoon March 26. The following week, the committee will travel to Calgary March 31, Edmonton April 1 and Winnipeg April 2.
“I am very optimistic that we will propose amendments that will make the bill better,” said Saskatchewan Conservative senator and committee chair Len Gustafson.
Larry Maguire, one of the leading opponents of Bill C-4, agreed the Senate hearings offer critics their best chance to change the government’s mind.
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He and other critics will try to bolster their case by noting that delegates to the Ontario Wheat Producers’ Marketing Board last week voted to experiment with a dual export market.
“I think they (the government) should be susceptible to changing their minds a bit or why else would the Liberals have let the committee travel?” asked the president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers and a leader of the Coalition Against C-4. “We have the Ontario decision now. Will prairie farmers be the only ones left without choice?”
At the National Farmers Union, executive secretary Darrin Qualman conceded the Senate committee and the Liberal government may be in a mood for accepting some changes to the bill, but he does not consider that positive.
“I fear if they are willing to make changes, they will not be changes board supporters will like,” he said.
One focus of the debate will be whether to remove the inclusion clause that would allow farmers to ask for a vote on proposals to add grains to the wheat board monopoly.
No choice available
It has become a focus for the critics, even though for most the key flaw in the bill is that it does not give farmers the choice of marketing outside the board.
“We certainly will be arguing that at a minimum, the inclusion clause should be struck,” said Maguire. “But we would consider it a weak victory if that is all we got because the whole bill is deeply flawed.”
He suggested wheat board minister Ralph Goodale is becoming isolated in his refusal to make major changes.
“It is our view that if the border was opened up to barley now, you wouldn’t have the pools asking that it be closed again,” said Maguire. “There has been a change of attitude everywhere but in the minister’s office.”
Gustafson said he is unable to promise the government that the committee study of the legislation will be finished in April, as Goodale has requested.
