AS SOMEONE who has never lived south of the Trans-Canada Highway on the Prairies, there may be a gap in my understanding of local etiquette and rules of fair play and decency south of the No. 1.
There is no other explanation for what transpired on Parliament Hill last week when Canadian Wheat Board president and CEO Greg Arason was summoned to defend the commercial reputation of the institution he was appointed by the Conservative government to defend.
Conservative MPs David Anderson from southwestern Saskatchewan and Ted Menzies from southern Alberta rose to the occasion by basically calling Arason a liar.
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And he was supposed to be their man!
Shame on them.
A little background is in order. Arason, a respected long-time executive in the co-operative wheat pool sector before that became a dirty word, served as CWB president and CEO in the 1990s as a Liberal appointee. His tenure was not criticized. He kept his nose clean.
He retired, was replaced by Adrian Measner and Measner became a respected senior executive.
Measner ran afoul of the anti-monopoly Conservative government elected in January 2006 when he became part of the political lobby to oppose government plans to end the monopoly. Appearances with opposition politicians denouncing the politicians who had the power to replace him sealed his fate.
The Conservatives were lucky in December 2006 to lure Arason out of retirement to fill the CEO job they forced Measner out of until a permanent replacement could be found. He had credibility and a reputation as apolitical. It gave the political purge some credibility.
Agriculture minister Chuck Strahl’s mandate to Arason was clear: you’ll be paid $31,000 per month plus some benefits and your job is to be a business executive running the board and staying out of the political debate.
So Arason has done that and when he saw Conservatives telling what he considers lies about CWB sales to Algeria and Ontario, he decided it was against the interests of the CWB that he had been hired to manage.
He sent 10 years of sales data for Algeria to Strahl, insisting it proves the CWB case that it has not been underselling in that market, and then appeared on Parliament Hill last week to make the same point.
And for his efforts, he gets this from senior Conservatives at the House of Commons agriculture committee.
Anderson suggested Arason, sitting beside him, is just the latest CWB snake oil salesman.
“Mr. Arason says we should trust him. I’ve heard that for a long time from the CWB that we should just trust them on their numbers and everything is OK.”
Actually, the board has provided the numbers to Anderson’s boss’s office and offered a briefing. Only after a bit of knowledge rather than ideology should he decide whether Arason is lying.
Menzies, a smart, capable and affable man, did Arason the disservice of suggesting he was lying by reading someone else’s script: “I believe that isn’t exactly what you would have wanted to tell us.”
There is no honour in the way these two senior Conservatives treated someone conscripted into the battle to save their credibility in the wheat board campaign.
Shame on them.
