Following are excerpts from the June 19 House of Commons debate on a Reform motion to allow farmers to opt our of the Canadian Wheat Board marketing system for two years. The motion did not come to a vote. (See also page 7 excerpt.)
Elwin Hermanson (R-Kindersley-Lloydminster): … why does the minister of agriculture listen to all the negative whiners who cry that the Canadian Wheat Board will be destroyed if prairie farmers have a choice as to whether they market their own wheat and barley through the Canadian Wheat Board or outside of the board?
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Frankly, I do not know the reason other than the obvious conclusion that they have no confidence in the board, which is a conclusion I do not share. …
We need to ask and answer the questions: Can dual marketing work in the Canadian prairies?
Should producers be compelled against their will to market wheat and barley through a state-run marketing agency? …
We currently have dual marketing for feed grains. It is a matter of fact. Farmers have the option to go through the board to market their feed grain or they can do it independently from the board.
There has been a dual market for barley in the past. On August 1, 1993, the Government of Canada removed from the control of the Canadian Wheat Board the sole authority over barley sold into the United States.
Although a continental barley market was a short-lived 40 days, it showed that a dual-market system was in fact viable. … While other factors played into the increased barley sales to the U.S., such as the severe weather, it still illustrated the important market for prairie barley in the United States.
There is also a form of dual marketing in Australia under the Australian wheat board.
This is not a concept that has not been proven and tried. …
Can a dual grain marketing system work in Canada? I believe the answer is yes. There is no doubt that some reforms to the Canadian Wheat Board Act will be required. This is not a negative option, but a constructive one.
The board needs to be reformed regardless of whether or not grain marketing moves to a dual system.
Should farmers be able to opt in and out of the board at will? This is a question I hear debated across the Prairies from the grain elevators to farm meetings that I have attended.
Maybe or maybe not.
Today’s motion simply calls for producers who wish to market outside of the board to have that choice for two years.
We are not talking about opting in or out. We are talking about producers opting out and staying out for two years, out altogether, no holds barred. It would be a test case allowing both sides in the argument a chance to prove their point.
If dual marketing works, let it continue. …
Wayne Easter (L-Malpeque): … The member talked a lot about choice. What Reform is really prepared to do in terms of the choice here is throw an entire industry with a worldwide reputation for reliability and quality into chaos. That is what it is prepared to do with this motion in order to satisfy the short-term demands of a few law-breakers.
His proposal would not take us forward, as he is proposing. He should learn a little from history.
It would move us back to the late 1800s and 1920s, when the grain robber barons and the railway monopolies were able to take advantage of farmers.
That was why the Canadian Wheat Board was created in the first place. …
He talked about moving barley to the United States.
Does he not recognize that, yes, there was more barley moved, but in the final analysis it was shown it was sold at a lower price?
Does the member not recognize the advantage of single-desk selling? We cannot have orderly marketing and dual marketing working side by side. It does not work that way.
If we move away from the single-desk selling of orderly marketing, what we are really allowing is Canadian farmers to compete against each other in terms of driving prices down. The orderly marketing of single-desk selling gives strength and marketing power to producers, and the honorable member should recognize that.
Does the member not recognize that the pooling system allows all producers to take advantage of the booms and to limit bad prices when they occur, and that the nation as a whole benefits? …
Jean-Guy ChrŽtien (BQ-Frontenac): … I have a question: would it really benefit producers to free up the market so that each of them could go as far as their ambitions would take them? Knowing the vulnerability of this industry personally, and particularly all the factors outside of simple grain production, I can only say that this measure would mean financial suicide for any individual wanting to go it alone. …
This alternative defies understanding. It would allow producers to compete, to a certain extent, with their colleagues until such time as they understand that the real financial advantage lies in agricultural and commercial union.
Is this morally acceptable? I strongly doubt it. …
Jake Hoeppner (R-Lisgar-Marquette): …the time is long overdue for the Canadian Wheat Board to be opened up and held accountable to Canadian taxpayers. The agriculture minister must wake up and provide leadership.
The Canadian Wheat Board has long-term debt of $6.8 billion and when we try to find out where that debt is, what the interest rates are or what is happening to it, who it is being written off to, we are stonewalled. Neither the auditor-general nor the people from the estimates committee can fill us in on what is going on.
If democracy does not succeed in this issue, what will be next under attack? When governments find vehicles to pamper their ledgers, pamper their own pocketbooks, it becomes very dangerous. …
Jean-Guy ChrŽtien (BQ-Frontenac): … the fact of people opting out temporarily for two years, is, in my humble opinion, twisted, even sick. Imagine a milk producer who wants to opt out for two years, test the waters, check things out elsewhere, and who realizes that it is not worth the effort and comes back to the pool with his colleagues. No.
Mr. Speaker, you are in good health. There is a group drug insurance plan that costs you $1,000. You say that in any given year you pay $50 for medications, because you are never sick. You are not in the group plan. After a year or two, you become terribly sick. You go and ask whether they will let you in so it will only cost you $1,000.
It does not make sense. …
Jerry Pickard (L, parliamentary secretary to minister of agriculture): … The industry sells some 30 million tonnes of wheat around the world to markets in Japan, Asia and throughout the United States. Sales to the United States are in the area of about two million.
What I am hearing from some spot pricing at very specific times is in fact that little market in the United States, which represents only seven per cent of the sales of Canadian grain into the United States, may blip up from time to time.
When the price in the United States goes up the Canadian Wheat Board gets that price. There is absolutely no question that the board picks up that spot price in the United States.
It also picks up all the prices throughout the rest of the world. Not only will that two million tonnes be sold in the United States for a higher price when the spot price is high, but also the other 28 million tonnes that is sold in other regions of the world.
As a result every farmer that sells wheat to the wheat pool gets the benefit of that high price and the average of all the other prices put together.
That is how a pool works. …
Bernie Collins (L-Souris-Moose Mountain): … this motion represents a piecemeal and a cavalier approach to the serious business of marketing Canadian grains around the world, and the serious business of one of the top four or five sectors in the Canadian economy, agriculture and food. …
Jay Hill (R-Prince George-Peace River): Mr. Speaker, I listened with rapt attention to the honorable member’s comments even though they are absolute nonsense. This member is saying that the third party, the Reform Party, is out to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board, which is absolute nonsense.
We are getting sick and tired
of trying to initiate a sensible, realistic debate on this subject only to be subjected to that kind of nonsense. …
Garry Breitkreuz (R-Yorkton-Melville): … Is it fair that corn producers can sell their corn in Ontario wherever they wish? Is it fair that Quebec farmers can sell their wheat for $9.50 a bushel to the mills in Ontario but a Saskatchewan farmer cannot access that?
Saskatchewan cannot sell their wheat in Ontario but other people can. Does the honorable member think that is fair? …
Leon Benoit (R-Vegreville.): … It seems sad that we need to have debate on giving farmers the choice to market their own product.
What other business persons in the country allow government to market their products for them? …
Alex Shepherd (L-Durham): … All the profits from the Canadian Wheat Board go back to the farmers. It is obvious to me and I do not know why it is not obvious to the member.
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a pool marketing system on the one hand and also have a whole bunch of other farmers outside of it. …
Jake Hoeppner (R-Lisgar-Marquette): … I agree pooling is a nice way of doing things and getting good and equal prices.
However, what would he do with farmers who are in a position of having land which is overtaxed and overpriced and who have to pay five times as much for their property tax as some of their neighbors?
Should the cost not also be pooled so these farmers can continue to operate? ….
Marlene Cowling (L, parliamentary secretary to minister of natural resources): … It is important to remind members opposite that the Canadian Wheat Board came into being through a grassroots movement by Canadian farmers.
They lobbied the federal government to put in place a marketing agency to help them access export markets.
The Canadian Wheat Board exists because prairie farmers demanded it.
The Canadian Wheat Board continues to exist because by far the majority of farmers support it.
This is very important for members to keep in mind. Farmers are in essence the board’s shareholders.
The mandate of the board is to get the best possible returns for Canadian prairie farmers. …
As a farmer, I know what the board means for the bottom line of our farms. The board provides me and farmers like me with consistently higher prices than we could get by marketing on our own.
This was proven in an external performance appraisal conducted by three well-known and well-respected agricultural economists from the prairies.
The evaluation clearly stated that if single-desk selling were ended prairie farmers would lose $13.35 per tonne, which would amount to a total loss to prairie farmers of $365 million per year.
Is this what Reformers want?
Do they want to take $365 million out of farmers’ pockets every year?
… The board’s reputation for products of excellent and reliable quality is commonly recognized as Canada’s trump card on international grain markets.
Buyers from around the world ignore cheap grain to buy Canadian. Why would they do this? They know it is consistent from year to year, load to load.
Our export partners know they get the best quality wheat and barley in the world from the Canadian Wheat Board, and they come back year after year. …
Garry Breitkreuz (R-Yorkton-Melville): … Surveys have been taken in my riding and over 80 percent of the people want the Canadian Wheat Board. They like the Canadian Wheat Board but they see the Liberal government destroying the board by its inaction. …
Farmers suspect that a lot of the grain is shipped through Thunder Bay and the Lakehead and goes out through the east because it benefits eastern interests and is controlled by politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa.
We have no way of knowing whether that is true.
Farmers would like to see the port of Churchill utilized a lot more because it has great advantages. ….
Jean Landry (BQ-Lotbinire): … I can understand, obviously, that certain barley and wheat producers want to get out of the CWB, but do they all?
Should we give up a system that works relatively well for all wheat and barley producers for a small group?
… the Canadian government supports the funding of the Canadian Wheat Board when it borrows on international markets.
Can you imagine the rate of interest the CWB would be able to negotiate allowing producers to withdraw for two years?
Would it be able to negotiate rates as advantageous as those it gets now? …
Georgette Sheridan (L-Saskatoon-Humboldt): … The member from the Bloc mentioned, and I quote from some of his comments, that the Reform Party was out of touch.
That is abundantly clear when we have many western producers who favor not the dismantling of the wheat board but having a close examination of it to see how it could be improved in a sensible, logical, carefully thought out way. It is anathema to the Reform Party.
Carefully thought out is not in the Reform Party handbook.
My honorable friend also mentioned that what the Reform Party is up to is political mileage. The other side of that is short-term thinking.
I guess if one is the fourth party, short-term thinking is about all one can afford to do because one will not be around that long anyway. …
Jay Hill (R-Prince George-Peace River): … He said he did not know whether the two systems, free marketing and the Canadian Wheat Board, can operate jointly. Well, neither do we. That is the whole point of the motion. …
Is it fair that some farmers in this country depending upon where they live can take advantage of opportunities and market their wheat directly to a flour mill? It is still going on today.
Farmers in another area, because it is under the umbrella of the Canadian Wheat Board, are prevented from taking advantage of that opportunity.
That is what we are talking about tonight. We are talking about freedom, choice and fairness. …
Morris Bodnar (L, parliamentary secretary to minister of western diversification): … They talk of a dual-marketing system and they have not presented any numbers or any evaluation of their proposal by any professionals to show that their system is beneficial to the farmers.
They have done nothing of the sort in a multibillion-dollar system.
Perhaps they could get a few numbers from H&R Block.
They should not be that busy, tax time is over. They have not even done that. They are simply acting on a whim. …
Charlie Penson (R-Peace River): … We are not getting rid of the Canadian Wheat Board. We are calling for a trial period to see which agency farmers will choose: a free marketing system or the state-controlled monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board.
If they choose to vote state-controlled for their produce, that is what we will continue with. If they choose to vote for a free market, that is what they should have. …
If the Canadian Wheat Board is so good, why do we not extend it to Ontario and Quebec? …
Today’s generation of commercial farmers want to substitute their management skills for the collective approaches that have dominated the past few decades. They see new opportunities in hot new markets like organic grains.
Using their own skills and their own comparative advantages, they want to be free to grow crops and market them as they please, just the same as any other industry. …
Editor’s note: copies of the full debate are available from most MPs, or can be found on the
Producer’s web site:
http://www.producer.com/
