Jake Hoeppner

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, June 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed the presentation by the minister. I was not quite sure whether he was talking about the Canadian Wheat Board or the Latin American wheat board. There seems to be some discrepancy in the way he described the wheat board.

I would like to enlighten members a bit on the history of why this bill is before the House. I must agree with the Liberal government. It finally did bring a bill forward where it really has consulted for about five years now, since I came to the House.

This wheat board bill was the result of farmers being unhappy when their frozen wheat could not be sold in 1992-93, when the fusarium wheat was not sold by the wheat board and farmers had to do that themselves and they found a market. They found better prices than the wheat board had ever offered them for it.

That is what created quite a stir in western Canada. All of a sudden farmers realized they can market their wheat and barley the same as they are marketing canola, flax, lentils and peas and get better prices. That is where the debate started.

I was encouraged in this House when after a lot of discussion at the agriculture committee meeting the wheat board minister said bring forward some legislation, let us see what we should be doing but first we should consult. That was not a bad idea. I must give the wheat board minister credit for that. I also must give him credit for establishing the Western Grain Marketing Panel which went across western Canada to see what farmers really wanted in the new legislation.

It was astounding when the marketing panel was finished after about a year of consultation and travelling and wrote its report. The majority of farmers said they can live with this, it is a pretty good piece of advice from the marketing panel. Farmers were going to have choices. They could decide whether to market some of their barley outside the board or within the board. They could designate up to 25% of their wheat to be marketed into the cash market. Some of the more extreme farmers who wanted total freedom to market their grain said they could live with this. They wanted to try it to see how it would work.

This is where the Liberal government went wrong. It did not like what the western grain marketing panel told the government and decided to start a letter writing campaign. It took four to five months before those letters were in and the farmers had given more advice. I do not think that advice was much different from what the western grain marketing panel had heard.

For some reason the government and the minister just did not seem to get it. Farmers were unhappy with the marketing system and wanted more choice. We finally did get some legislation.

I must give this government credit again. We made another tour across western Canada with Bill C-72 and heard the same thing from every part of the prairies. The farmers wanted more market choices. They wanted to have a say in how to market their grains. Farmers grow it and have become the most productive enterprise in the world as far as farming is concerned but they cannot survive on the prices that they are getting for their wheat board grains.

More and more farmers switched to special crops and were growing less and less wheat board grains every year. This is detrimental to our farming industry because we need a rotational system to keep our land in good stewardship and make sure there is a good future in farming for generations to come.

When we were finished with Bill C-72 the bill might have passed but there was one mistake made during the hearings. It was a very sad mistake because it created a lot of division. One of the members on the Liberal side introduced an amendment which he called an inclusion clause. It really caused division across western Canada. People did not want to hear about any more grains being put under the Canadian Wheat Board. They first wanted to see if they could change the wheat board enough that it became accountable and that it did a good job in marketing their grain.

I do not think it was ever put in a better perspective than by the Globe and Mail just before C-4. It stated that if the Canadian Wheat Board could not be made accountable, and if the Canadian Wheat Board was negligent in doing its duty of selling the grain for the best price, why would farmers then want a Canadian Wheat Board?

Mr. Speaker, I am sure if you were running a business and somebody was managing the business for you and did not get the best price for you, did not show on the bottom line that there was a profit and that you were always in the red and could not afford to run the business without a deficit, you would not have the guy around very long or you would be gone. That is what farmers are fighting for today.

Farmers are disappearing from western Canada as quickly as the flies in fall. We are getting bigger and bigger farms and more farmers with bigger debt problems. We are losing our agriculture industry. That is why it is so important that we do not make another mistake in this bill.

I agree that these amendments are going in the right direction but they do not go far enough as far as western Canadian farmers are concerned. What should be in this bill is a preamble which states that the Canadian Wheat Board will have as its main mandate to sell grain for the best interests of the farmer.

To have the Canadian Wheat Board there, to have a mandate, to do an orderly marketing job and to move the grain is not sufficient for farmers. They have to show profit to remain viable.

Why is the government so hesitant to include that preamble or a clause that says the wheat board's main mandate should be to sell the grain at the best price available? It does not say it always has to be the highest; it says the best price available. That is what farmers were doing in 1992 and 1993. They found markets that were better than what the wheat board was giving them.

Is that a sin? That is what I would ask the minister. Is it a sin to provide a piece of legislation that would provide those benefits? That is why I find it kind of hard to pass this bill with the amendments that the Senate proposed. They are good amendments, but I do not think they go far enough.

I see in a few notes what the Senate said after they were finished with the hearings. It became very clear throughout the hearings that the majority of farmers were unhappy with this legislation.

The minor watered down amendments are not going to resolve the problems in western Canada. They are not going to create unity among farmers who have been debating for about 10 years whether we should have open markets or single desk selling or dual markets or a voluntary wheat board.

Those are the issues we will be addressing in the next day or so, as much time as the Liberal government will allow us to debate these amendments. I think it is very fitting that we do not leave this House before we pass this bill with amendments that will create more unity among western farmers.

If that is not what this bill does, we are going to get into a situation where we will lose more of the wheat board grain. Farmers will grow less of it and finally it will kill itself. There will be no need for a wheat board because there will be only special crops grown.

I want to ask you another question, Mr. Speaker. You are a wise man, I know, and you are a good businessman. I read in this amendment that is being proposed by the Senate that the minister will not appoint the president unless the board has fixed the remuneration to be paid to the president and has informed the minister of the remuneration.

The minister can appoint the president. He can pick whoever he wants. He can pick probably his son-in-law or his wife if he wants to, but the board has the right to set the remuneration. Mr. Speaker, if you had a person in your business and somebody made you hire him and you knew already that he had been fired by the last five businesses where he worked, what kind of compensation would you give him? Would you give him a high priced job? Would you set him right up at the top with all the rest of the CEOs or would you give him nothing so this guy would take off before he was ever hired?

I can see what is going to happen. There is going to be a fight between the board and the directors. If the directors do not think the president or the CEO is capable or will fill the job, the remuneration is going to be such that he will not be able to stay around very long. They will be changing CEOs quite regularly. The farmers will demand that this man do his job.

That is one big problem I see with this amendment. The minister can like the guy. The minister can say that the guy carries a Liberal membership card, but by cracky the directors are going to set the remuneration and that is where the problem is. I as a farmer would say “Make him pay you something for working for you if he does not have the qualifications because we are going to get rid of him anyhow. Why spend money on him?” That is one of the very big faults with this amendment.

The other fault I see is when it comes to the auditing of the board by the auditor general. We put in an amendment that said the audit should be done by the auditor general because most farmers show a lot of respect and have a lot of confidence in the auditor general. That is one piece of paper farmers would read. Whenever the auditor general came out with a report, they did not read much, but that they would read. Farmers know what a good job means to an industry and what a good audit does to a business.

In my area it was the talk of the town in the coffee shop when the auditor general said that the government had again wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on overpayments on welfare, on foreign junkets or on whatever. They would have very willingly accepted the auditor general auditing the books.

This amendment says that there will be a one time audit and the auditor general can do that within two years of this bill becoming law. He can pick the years he wants to audit. I am sure the auditor general will be wise enough to pick the years that are closest to the termination of the board so he has an idea.

However if there is enough political pressure on him he could be made to audit the 1943 wheat board books which would not do us much good, would it? There is another problem. It should be specified what years are audited and when the audit is brought back. We should be given a value for money audit so we can know whether or not the board has done a half decent job in the past two or three years. That is another big problem I find with these amendments.

The third one is doing away with the inclusion and exclusion clause. It is kind of vague. According to the amendment, the minister has some kind of manipulative power to bring forward a vote but if he does not want to, there is nobody who can force him to call for a plebiscite among the farmers. There is no mechanism that you can do it or not. This could be a disputatious type of clause where farmers could be divided.

I do not think farmers will accept this bill the way it is. It will be forced on them. We know that after so much of the situation where people have no say in what they do or in what they want to do, eventually there will come a time when the system will destroy itself.

The first time I talked on the Canadian Wheat Board was in 1994. I heard all the comments of farmers about the unaccountability of the board and the suspicions of the board. If the board is not going to become more open and accountable, just the mistrust will eventually destroy it, even if it has done a fairly good job. But when people see a closed entity that is unable or unwilling to give the people involved, in this case farmers, the opportunity to see what it does, those people will refuse it whether it is good or bad. We have seen that in other industries. Openness, competition and fairness give us the entity and competition needed to make a board function properly and do a good job for the farmers.

It is imperative that we do not pass this legislation if we are not able to include in this legislation the preamble that the board has to be accountable and open to farmers. If it is only going to be open and accountable to the corporation or the minister, the mistrust will stay there and the board will never function properly or at least not to its fullest capacity.

We have to have a system that can be trusted the same as government is. The Liberals will realize the more mistrust, the worse the situation is. I would bet my bottom dollar that in 1993 when the Conservative government lost its mandate, it was probably not for the terrible job it did but because of the mistrust that it was not doing a proper job.

They always say a government is not elected; a government is defeated. It is the same thing with the Canadian Wheat Board. The Canadian Wheat Board will destroy itself if it does not become accountable and give farmers the opportunity to trust it.

That is why I maintain that a voluntary wheat board will make the board function better. It will probably do more business because it will have to compete. It is in the position to do the best job. With its mandate and with the amount of grain that it can access it should be able to do a better job than any individual farmer.

I can see the point that if the trust is put back in the board and it does a good job there is a future for the board marketing other grains. If that trust is not put back into the board farmers will see that and experience it. The bottom line is that they have to put food on their table. They have to pay machinery expenses and input costs. It has to work. If the system is not in a position to make farming viable it will fail.

One point I want to make clear is that in 1935 the Canadian Wheat Board was not a monopoly wheat board. It was a dual marketing system. The wheat board was put in place to provide competition for grain companies that were probably doing a lousy job.

In 1943 the wheat board was given its monopoly not to increase prices for farmers but to control prices and to allow the government to sell grain at a lower price to our allies. I do not think that any farmer in western Canada objected to helping with the war effort, to taking a lower price so that they could help the allies in their battle against the Nazis, the imperialists or whatever they were called.

I just thought the minister would want to know that it was not a monopoly at one time and it functioned very well in a competitive arena. That is the direction we should go in. I hope the Liberals are wise enough to add that amendment and take the credit for it instead of having Reform do it for them.

[Supply, June 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague from Wild Rose how he feels about governments using the court system.

The Soviet Union had a dictatorship for a long time and what my mother always told me is at the start before the revolution the government used the courts to put people into prison. Once they had control of the government, they had the revolution. Then the dictatorship did away with the courts altogether. We have seen that happening the same way in some third nation countries. I am wondering if he has any fear of that happening here. I would like to hear his thoughts on that.

[Agriculture, May 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, on February 19 the Western Producer reported that the Canadian Wheat Board minister was adamant that the government auditor not get access to Canadian Wheat Board books because it handles farmer money rather than government money.

Has the minister now changed his mind? Is he willing to allow the auditor general to audit the Canadian Wheat Board as recommended by the Senate amendments to Bill C-4?

[Canadian Wheat Board, May 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to farmers' concerns about secrecy at the Canadian Wheat Board, the Senate has recommended that the board be audited by the auditor general.

This is very timely because during the testimony at the Senate hearings on Bill C-4 the Canadian Wheat Board officials admitted that they are one of the largest players on the Minneapolis grain exchange.

Mr. Earl Geddus, program manager for market development, said “We will play about as much as they let us, always being long with wheat stocks”.

The board fails to report these activities in its annual report to farmers. If the wheat board minister had any desire to make the board more accountable and transparent to farmers he would fulfil his duty and table a report on these trading activities before this House and he would allow the auditor general to do an annual audit on the wheat board books.

[Petitions, May 13th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the third petition deals with the Canadian Wheat Board delivering its grain shipments to the port that offers the most advantageous cost to producers and the requirement for conveyers to guarantee seamless car interchange between all railways and short lines.

I support all three petitions.

[Petitions, May 13th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in another petition the petitioners pray that parliament fill future vacancies in the Senate through elections.

[Petitions, May 13th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions to present.

I have 1,800 signatures on the brutal murder of Jeff Giles. The petitioners pray that government will amend the Criminal Code so that violent crimes result in stiff sentences and that those guilty of violent crime are not eligible for parole or conditional release of any kind.

[Canada Grain Act, May 11th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I would first like to compliment the Conservative Party for picking up on this clause and giving us this second group of amendments to the bill to make it voluntary. It is very important and quite complementary to what farmers want.

What does voluntary really mean? To me it means something I decide how to do and how I want to handle it.

The comment was made that it is only 38 cents per $100 that this is going to cost farmers. Maybe that is not that huge a sum but when we look at the input costs of farmers to the 38 cents on every $100 they spend it is another 3.8% increase in expenses. They are the best to decide whether they have the funds available to service that extra debt.

When I look at 38 cents per $100 I know that covers our hail insurance premiums which is something we need because we are in a hail area. If we do not have that coverage we are probably out of luck and looking at bankruptcy around the corner if we cannot cover our costs.

I cannot condemn this plan as a total package because I think it is going in the right direction. However, the Liberal government would find that if it were voluntary to the terms that a farmer would define as voluntary, it would probably receive 90% to 95% acceptance if farmers could afford that money. The majority of farmers want to take risks out of their operations. With the huge input costs it is becoming harder and harder to make that bottom line meet what it is suppose to.

As the parliamentary secretary said, it is not a fund. It is an insurance plan. However, we still have to realize it is set up for the special crops industry and they will have to make it financially sound. If it does not pay the expenses or the claims that will be processed against it they will have to increase that premium to make it viable or else there will be no insurance plan.

Those are things we have to consider. If we make it mandatory and then all of a sudden the premium rates increase to $1 per $100 that probably would be something that farmers could not afford.

I like to believe that governments always intend the best but sometimes because they do not listen to producer groups or farmers maybe the intention is not fulfilled or it somehow gets distracted. When the parliamentary secretary says that there will be at least five producers on that advisory board, that still leaves the option of four appointed political people or friends or whomever they would like to appoint. That means they would only have to persuade one out of five farmers to side with them and farmer clout would be gone as far as the board is concerned.

When I hear politicians saying they will make it as simple as possible, this really bothers me. What does that really mean? During debate not too long ago the hon. member for Yorkton—Melville talked about Bill C-68 and the regulations put forward. The member indicated how they were becoming impossible to implement and costs would be prohibitive. One of the Liberal members stated it is no more complex than the Income Tax Act. If that is the simple method implemented to bring this bill forward I would be really scared on simplification. I think that spells disaster.

This is the reason farmers are very hesitant to approve something they do not have control over. We know that with the regulations we now have on farms regarding environmental issues, such as gasoline tanks being diked, it is becoming very hard for farmers to have the right to farm. That is why I think they are very hesitant to accept this bill when the voluntary portion is not included in it. I must compliment the Conservative Party for bringing this forward. I think this will make the bill fly if the amendment is passed and it will be quite successful.

The parliamentary secretary indicated that the government would listen and act in good faith. I want to believe that is going to happen but we have to look back approximately one year when the wheat board minister, who was the agriculture minister, set up the Western Grain Marketing Panel.

For a year and a half we heard in this House that farmers were going to get marketing choices. The government said it would listen to farmers and spent a couple of million dollars travelling across western Canada. I think the committee did listen. There were some very good people whom the minister appointed to that panel. They did a very good job. What has happened to that report? Absolutely nothing. None of the suggestions by the panel was accepted. Its advice was not heeded.

The then minister of agriculture went back to farmers and had them write letters. Thousands of letters came in. They said exactly the opposite of what the Western Grain Marketing Panel had said. All the suggestions and recommendations were thrown aside.

We are again debating Bill C-4 and not only has it created a lot of debate in the House but it also forced the Senate to have another round of hearings in western Canada and listen to farmers. We have spent millions of dollars on the process of listening and wanting to act in good faith.

We have to show our producers, our constituents and taxpayers that we really want to act in good faith. Let us accept what people tell government, implement their suggestions, implement the regulations they would like to see in these bills and then act on it. Bills can be changed. Nothing says this bill is for eternity. We may have a different government after the next election and it may say it does not think the regulations are right. Let us get something the general public, the producer and the taxpayer, really thinks is in its interest and is cost effective.

I am certain that if farmers believe this insurance plan and this licensing plan is worth the money spent on it they will support it. I have never seen a program yet in western Canada during the 35 years that I was a farmer that was not supported by the majority of farmers if it made sense.

Practically 75% to 85% of the farmers in my area supported the western grain stabilization act. When they realized how it really worked when it triggered payouts close to 100% supported it. Other farmers wanted to join. They had that option. They were allowed to join.

That is what I think would happen with Bill C-26. If it was made voluntary, we would be amazed at the percentage of farmers who would support it and would give the government credit for making it voluntary and cost effective and for ensuring that there was protection not just for the producers but also for the processing industry. When they work together, get good protection, get the markets, it can only help everybody.

I was astounded when I spoke to two young farmers last week. I asked if they were hear to listen to the Senate hearings on Bill C-4. One of the young gentlemen said that they were here to try to create a seed industry, the export of seeds, for pinto beans to Mexico. I asked why they were interested in growing pinto beans as seed for Mexico.

He said that they had developed this industry and they were always running into problems with foreign markets. The Mexicans are producing an inferior product. The people who wanted to buy the product hedged on the price saying that the Mexicans could sell them the product for less money, but they never looked at the quality of that product. They were trying to develop a seed market for the Mexican farmers so that it would improve their product and they would have a level playing field on the foreign markets.

That is the way the special crops industry has worked over the years. It is a tremendous asset to this country. We should accommodate their wishes and pass these amendments.

[Canada Grain Act, May 11th, 1998]

We elected them but who shut their mouths? The agriculture minister says they were elected but how were they elected? They still have to listen to the minister and the wheat board. It is really astounding. The special crops industry would not have developed to the stage that it is at had it not been for the Canadian Wheat Board putting pressure on farmers to know nothing, to do nothing and to be happy with nothing.

The Ontario farmers made the decision that they wanted a fully elected board and now they even have a clause to opt out. What a difference in farmers from Ontario and from western Canada. If we could just reverse the universe and put western Canada into the middle of the country maybe we would get some privileges and be treated equally. The Liberal government has never known what equality means when it comes to western farmers.

The special crops industry is a tremendous boon to the western agricultural industry. If it were not for the special crops industry, farmers would be starving today. The problem today is we will probably need a special crops industry for wheat and barley soon because nobody wants to grow it. It will become a special crops industry. It has become so non-profitable that farmers have refused to grow it.

We have heard time and time again that the farmers want to run it themselves. They want a voluntary insurance and licensing agency. What do they mean by voluntary? They have said they want to choose whether or not to participate at the beginning of the crop year.

I can guarantee to this House that had this been really voluntary, probably 90% to 95% of the farmers would have participated in this board or the special crops industry mechanism. However, they have not been given that opportunity or will not be given that opportunity. Farmers will again be second class to eastern farmers. They will not have the opportunity to run their business as they see fit.

I remember a year or two ago when the special crops people began phoning me about being licensed as a grain dealer. What did this government do? It sent the RCMP after these poor farmers because they were being successful. That is illegal in this country according to this democratic Liberal government. If they are successful, the government either taxes them to death or regulates them to death.

Here is an instance where the special crops industry has built western Canada to a point where it can practically survive on it alone without growing wheat board grains. Now the government wants to over-regulate it again.

The government does not know what voluntary means because it has not looked it up in the dictionary. Voluntary means they take your money and hang on to it as long as they possibly can and then maybe they will give some back after all the costs are taken off. That is what farmers object to. When farmers say voluntary they mean voluntary. When farmers say they will run it themselves they will run it themselves and they will not hound government to interfere with them.

It astounds me that in a democratic country where farmers have more or less designed and implemented an industry that has been very functional and a tremendous boon to western agriculture and industry, they are all of a sudden hounded by the RCMP. “Hey, you haven't got a licence. You are not a grain elevator”. Good gosh, a grain elevator handles just grain, it does not process the stuff; it buys it, sells it and delivers it.

A special crops industry is one where for example the sunflower seed is grown, it is dehulled, it is roasted and it is sold. One makes it go and it is run effectively in the way which gives the best returns to the producer, not to the industry itself.

I was astounded when I read the Senate hearings a week ago. My good friend Earl Geddes, whom I know very well said that the milling industry had to be licensed because one farmer could be milling wheat for the other farmer, the neighbour, and this would not protect the domestic industry. What have farmers done all their lives? They have worked as a unit. They have helped each other out when they have had problems. Then when they grow a product they cannot even do with it what they want to.

The special crops industry thought it had freedom, it had the rights to do it because it involved nothing with the Canadian Wheat Board. Now we find out we want an advisory board, an advisory board like we have seen for the last 15 years that was non-functional and that did nothing for farmers but cost money.

It is of utmost importance that this bill be amended and that the Reform amendments be passed by the House or we will have more division in agriculture. If that is what the government wants, then it should pass the bill the way it is.

If the government wants to finally do something for agriculture producers in western Canada, it should listen. Give farmers the right to run the business the way they feel is best so that they can function positively and be encouraged by the fact that finally government is listening, not that government is regulating and over-regulating.

I have two minutes left which will not really get me into another subject. I will just say that if the government really wants to put its mark on western Canada it will listen to the amendments Reform has proposed and it will have a happy special crops industry performing what is best for this country. It will put this country on the map when it comes to things like pinto beans, navy beans, whatever has not been grown that farmers are now starting to grow because they will take the risks. Farmers will try these new products. They will grow them, they will process them, they will market them and nobody else will gain but the whole country.

I urge government members to finally sit up and listen to western Canada. Let farmers do what they feel is right for their industry, not what some politicians in Ottawa think is right because they have a little too much of the Ottawa dust in their ears that they cannot hear properly. We need some good heavy downpours, some good showers and some soap and I am sure hon. members would listen better and let farmers work the way they do it best, co-operatively and for the benefit of society as a whole, not just for people individually.

[Canada Grain Act, May 11th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. parliamentary secretary from Manitoba. He has his roots in the soil but they are growing in the wrong direction; instead of up they are going down and when they are down they go up.

It is astounding how the listening apparatus of a human ear is so different. When the witnesses were before us we never heard anything about an advisory board. The special crops people said they wanted a board that was appointed by the industry. They said they only needed a small board and they knew industry people who could run the board. An advisory board means that they are going to give advice to somebody. Who is it in this bill that is going to give advice? It is the minister again.

Last week we saw how this Liberal government loves to create a two tier system among the hepatitis C victims and among the farmers. The hon. parliamentary secretary should realize that the Ontario wheat board has had a fully elected board for years. It did not need an advisory board.

The advisory board in western Canada gave us information that we did not need and it did not give us information that we should have had. None of those advisory board members ever told us that the wheat board was the biggest player on the Minneapolis grain exchange. They sat on the wheat board advisory board for years and we did not know.