When Kingston, Ont., lawyer Peter Milliken achieved a lifelong dream
last year by being elected the 34th speaker of the House of Commons, he
likely never imagined it would come to this.
Milliken is now mired in the minutiae of the Canada Transportation Act
and whether the government is breaking the law by not making available
to Parliament a report on last year’s grain system performance by the
grain system monitoring firm Quorum Corp.
Canadian Alliance transport critic James Moore from British Columbia
Read Also
British Columbia farmers to receive increased AgriStability supports
B.C. farmers to receive bump in AgriStability compensations due to weather concerns, international trade instability
has moved a motion of contempt against transport minister David
Collenette because a report from
Quorum was not produced by Feb. 28.
He said that under CTA changes approved in 2000 to reform the grain
transportation system, a report must be submitted to the government by
the grain monitor by the end of January each year and the government
must table it in Parliament within 15 parliamentary sitting days. It
was an opposition motion accepted by the government.
“I rise … to charge the minister of transport with contempt for his
failure to comply with a legislative requirement,” Moore said in the
Commons.
The government defence is that the requirement to table a report in
Parliament comes only after other complicated actions are taken under
the legislation.
“It is my view at the moment that the triggers referred to in the
legislation that would require the filing of a report within a certain
time period have not yet been pulled and therefore the government is in
no way in violation of the legislation,” responded government House
leader and Canadian Wheat Board minister Ralph Goodale.
Now, Milliken is thumbing through Bill C-34 to try to figure out where
the regulatory and legal truth lies.
He has no deadline for a ruling.
