Soon after Parliament returns from its Thanksgiving break Oct. 17, the federal Conservatives are likely to unveil legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
It will unleash a vitriolic debate.
After signs of public revulsion over the angry partisanship in the last Parliament, all parties returned to the House of Commons after the May election promising more civility, less rancor, more cooperation.
On the CWB file, forget it.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz set the tone recently when he mocked his principal critic because of where he lives.
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Winnipeg New Democrat Pat Martin, lead opposition critic of Conservative plans to dismantle the CWB single desk, represents a downtown Winnipeg riding that includes CWB head office. He also has a property on British Columbia’s tony Salt Spring Island.
When Martin criticized the government in the Commons for planning to dismantle the CWB without a cost-benefit analysis, Ritz ignored the question and instead challenged Martin’s credibility on the issue, suggesting he do some homework.
“When he goes home to his riding in downtown Winnipeg, he should check with …. Oh yes, there are no farmers there,” sneered the minister. “Or maybe when he goes on to his principal residence on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, he could check with … oh, they are not under the wheat board. He does not have a clue what he is talking about.”
Martin said later that even Conservative sympathizer and columnist Normal Specter, principal secretary to Brian Mulroney in the 1980s, emailed from British Columbia to say it was a low blow.
Of course, Martin is capable of his own low blows, recently calling the government campaign against the CWB an “ideological wet dream” for prime minister Stephen Harper.
There will be little civil give-and-take if the early going is an indication.
In the House, Medicine Hat Conservative LaVar Payne accused the CWB of using “every trick in the book” to thwart government plans including buying breakfast for NDP MPs at a September caucus in Quebec City in order to argue the opposition should subvert “the democratic process” by obstructing the bill in Parliament.
“The old Canadian Wheat Board is doing everything possible to fight marketing freedom, even refusing our offer to co-chair the industry working group,” Ritz replied. “That is unfortunate.”
Surely that is a foretaste of Conservative attacks to come.
The opposition can be expected to be equally partisan and the Conservatives have sprinkled enough contradiction across the political landscape to give some ammunition.
In 2011, for example, the Conservative line is that a farmer vote is not needed because rural ridings voted for the Conservatives in the May election.
But in the 2004 election campaign when the opposition Conservatives were trying to win government and promising to end the CWB monopoly, they sang a different tune about the need for farmer voice.
Then-Conservative agriculture critic Ritz said farmers should decide the issue before a government moves. “I agree that farmers should indicate first, whether through directors’ elections or a referendum, that they want change before it would happen,” he said then in an interview.
Southern Manitoba MP and now public safety minister Voc Toews took the same position.
“My farmers are split on the issue and I don’t think it would be wise for a government to decide this,” he said.
Farmers have the right to vote for CWB directors, he noted. “If farmers have the vote, they should decide how this issue goes.”
That, as they say, was then and this is now. Farmers have no right to directly vote in the issue, according to the government.
Opposition MPs can be sure to note what a difference a majority government makes when it comes to promises of democracy.
