Bill C-18 (Historical)

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act

An Act to reorganize the Canadian Wheat Board and to make consequential and related amendments to certain Acts

Part 1 of this enactment amends the Canadian Wheat Board Act to change the governance structure of the Canadian Wheat Board and to make other changes in preparation for the implementation of Parts 2 and 3. Part 2 replaces the Canadian Wheat Board Act with a new Act that continues the Canadian Wheat Board and charges it with the marketing of grain through voluntary pooling. Part 3 provides for the possible continuation of the Board under other federal legislation, while Part 4 provides for its winding up if no such continuation occurs. Finally, Part 5 provides for the repeal of the new Act enacted by Part 2.

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order. I would remind all hon. members to refrain from using unparliamentary language when referring to their colleagues.

The hon. member for Malpeque's question please.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the movement of grain is 900 miles in Canada from tidewater position. Looking at the future under this new government controlled board, I ask the parliamentary secretary, what arrangements have been made for the transportation and collection systems of the grain across the Prairies to ensure that the quality and variety of grain are moved off the Prairies, from the farms through the grain elevator system, on the main line and into the hold of a ship, in whatever port it may be in at the time, so that farmers do not pay demurrage?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard the member's rhetoric and one thing that really disappoints me is that he seems to think that somehow the quality and variety of western Canadian grain is due to the Canadian Wheat Board. We all know that it is due to the good efforts of Canadian farmers. It is not due to the Wheat Board. The Wheat Board merely handles it for farmers and farmers have been forced to deal with it. It is the farmers who grow the grains. It is the farmers who have had the highest quality grain produced around the world, and it is farmers who will continue to do that.

I want to address the beginning of his question before he got around to his insults. In 1990 I do not remember the Liberals coming to me and asking about changing the Canadian Wheat Board legislation. I do not remember them continuing to make it mandatory and coercive because they did not talk to me about that. They just made the changes they wanted to put in place. They never asked farmers what they would like. If they were to have asked then, I would have given the same answer so many of the other people who are here today would have given, which is that we wanted real choice and freedom. If they were to have granted it then, perhaps things would be different now, but we need to move ahead and give western Canadian farmers the freedom they deserve.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if these so-called free enterprises and people who came to Ottawa witnessing this really understand the impact of what is going on.

As a follow up to what my colleague from Winnipeg Centre said, there have been no impact studies or economic analyses on what is going on. Have Conservatives looked at the Australian experience? Three years after Australia deregulated its wheat board and split the coalition, farm groups say the new system is proving to be dangerous and a freakish place that has already brought about one co-op that has become unstuck. The quality now is fragmented. World markets cannot be assured of quality because this so-called deregulated board cannot function and does not have the clout it had before. If we look at it, 23% of the market share of this voluntary board in Australia collapsed without the single desk.

Has a study been done to assure us that these companies are going to pay the premium price that farmers are getting now, and that with around $500 million in revenue brought to farmers, it is not going to go into the pockets of some of the board of directors of Cargill or some of these other companies?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, so far the NDP has called western Canadian farmers stooges, goons and so-called entrepreneurs. I am sure the list of insults will go on through the afternoon, which perhaps is why it has been so effective in western Canada.

We have studies. We have studies galore that talk about the advantages of the free market and allowing people to make choice, and New Democrats know that. Perhaps they have not looked at them. The discussion has gone on for decades. We know that farmers are going to benefit from this.

It is interesting that the New Democrats mention Australia. There are a couple of things they never mention. They never mention oil for food. They never mention the fact that the board is broken up there because people are engaged in illegal activity. They also do not mention that since the board is gone in Australia, the amount of wheat acreage has gone up. I can say the same for Ontario. People are focusing on growing grain because they can.

The NDP needs to understand that Australia has doubled its credit to exporters and increased its customer base. It is doing a very good job competing. We need those same opportunities so that our farmers can compete.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I will not pretend to be someone I am not. I am from the riding of Peterborough, which is not under Wheat Board jurisdiction. I am not from the city of Winnipeg or Guelph, or Prince Edward Island. I am a person, though, who grew up on a farm and knows about growing crops, harvesting crops, having the crops come off the auger of the combine, and watching the fruit of one's labour. I cannot imagine being in a country today, Canada, where I would not have full say over my product. That is what this party is standing for. We have overwhelmingly elected all of the members from the Wheat Board jurisdiction.

Could the member tell me if he has spoken to farmers in his riding who believe the grain is, in fact, theirs and that they should have jurisdiction over it, not the Wheat Board?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, this is a remarkable question because in western Canada right now the grain does not belong to the farmers. They cannot do what they want with it. In the spring, farmers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. This spring they were out in the mud, trying to get a crop in and growing. They spent money on fertilizer and spray, and spent the summer bringing the crop in. In the fall, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on machinery to try to handle the crop and then they harvest it. They brought in the crop this fall, which was a great fall in most places, and put it in their bins, just to be told that it is not their grain.

We want to change that, so western Canadian farmers know that when they put the grain in their bins, it is their grain, and they are going to be able to do what they want with it. They look forward to that opportunity and we look forward to giving it to them. That is why we need to pass this bill as quickly as possible.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-18 at third reading.

I will simply restate what I said in my comments to the parliamentary secretary. This is one of those debates in the House of Commons where reasonable people can reasonably disagree. There are two sides to this debate. When the issue was put to a vote of prairie farmers, the result was split. Some say that it was 60:40, some say that it was 40:60 and some say that, if the right information had been distributed to them so they could have the legitimate facts, the vote would have been higher.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Now he's taking Elizabeth's position.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I do not want to be heckled by the parliamentary secretary through my whole speech, Mr. Speaker. If I have to put up with that guy for my 20 minutes, I hope there will be some intervention from the Chair.

In the absence of any documentary evidence or business case from the parliamentary secretary, all the Conservatives have left are their dilatory actions to ram the bill through the House of Commons without even the courtesy or the respect for Parliament to give it the attention and the debate that it deserves.

Anybody watching this debate should know that this monumental change to the economy of the prairie region has been handled in a cavalier fashion and rammed through at every stage of debate. The parliamentary secretary tried to give us a little history lesson about the background of the Wheat Board. The history of the Conservatives' treatment of this bill is a story of deceit, misinformation, dirty tricks, treachery and now of denying ordinary parliamentary procedure and respect for democracy. I will itemize and defend everything that I have just said.

When the Conservatives were first elected in their minority government, they began to make unilateral changes to the Wheat Board. The courts ruled them out of order and indicated that they could not do it. They were frustrated. They imposed a gag order on the Wheat Board, something that is unworthy of any western democracy and more in keeping with a tin pot dictator in a banana republic. The Conservatives imposed a legislative edict, a gag order, on the directors of the Wheat Board. They were not allowed to say anything in defence of the Wheat Board's operations.

At the same time, they carpet bombed the prairie region with taxpayer funded propaganda containing untruths and half-truths or, at best, to be generous, anecdotal information about spot prices that occurred somewhere in Montana that the parliamentary secretary could not get his trucks to. Twenty million tonnes of wheat cannot be moved to foreign markets based on anecdotal spot pricing somewhere in Montana. That is why the Canadian Wheat Board is one of the largest and most successful grain marketing companies in the world.

It is reckless and irresponsible for the government to unilaterally dismantle this great Canadian institution without even having the respect and the courtesy to table a business case that it knows for a fact that farmers would be better off without. That is all we are asking for, that and the vote that the minister promised prairie farmers.

I have had many calls from farmers in all three of the main Wheat Board provinces. I have had none from B.C., frankly. These farmers told me that they voted Conservative, for whatever reason, but that they voted that way with the confidence that they would still get a vote on the future of the Wheat Board. They might have voted Conservative but they were pro-Wheat Board. The parliamentary secretary cannot deny that there is a significant number of farmers in that situation. The May 2 general election was not a referendum on the future of the Canadian Wheat Board. It was a general election on any number of other issues.

The government then gerrymandered the voters' list. This also is unworthy of any progressive western democracy.

The government provided misinformation, a falsehood, that the minister would allow a vote. On April 11, In the middle of the general election, the minister is on record as saying that he would allow a vote. He assured farmers that they would get a vote on the future of the Wheat Board. He told them that they could safely vote Conservative because he respected democracy and he would consult with farmers on the future of the Wheat Board. That never came about. I do not know what to call it without being ruled unparliamentary, but when someone deliberately tells someone else a falsehood we all know what that is called.

Perhaps the greatest insult of all is the fact that the Conservatives are ramming the bill through with what we call time allocation or closure. That means we will not be able to give this issue the oversight, the scrutiny and the due diligence that is our very job as opposition members of Parliament. We are supposed to, again, in a spirit of generosity where reasonable people can reasonably disagree, both sides, put forward our arguments and defend our arguments with robust and thorough examination and, hopefully, the best ideas gravitate to the surface and that becomes law.

In the absence of any of that information, we cannot do that job. We were hoping, at the committee stage, perhaps, we would be able to call witnesses, we would be able to call prairie farmers who are for the Wheat Board, we would be able to call prairie farmers who are against it, we would be able to call economists and we would be able to call experts in grain marketing around the world. We were denied any of that. They did not send it to a committee. They created a special legislative committee to study the bill in which we are not allowed to call any witnesses other than technical advisors to clauses in the language.

We would not have been allowed to call any one of the anti-Wheat Board farmers who are witnessing this debate in the galleries today. I wanted to hear their point of view. I wanted to--

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. I would like to remind all hon. members not to refer to people who are or who are not in the House and, in the same way, who are or who are not in the gallery.

The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

A valid point, Mr. Speaker. I will not do that.

We should have been able to hear from pro-Wheat Board and anti-Wheat Board farmers but we heard from none of them. We had two evening meetings of four hours each. The witnesses were mostly technical witnesses to explain what effect clause (a), subclause (b) would have in terms of the administration of the Wheat Board. However, there was no broad consultation.

Surely it is reckless and irresponsible to turn the Prairie economy upside down on its head without at least that basic level of due diligence. It is crazy. It is the act of an ideological zealot, frankly, to ignore all of those things that we should be able to do. It is infuriating to me.

The parliamentary secretary tried to walk us through some kind of a history lesson of the Wheat Board. I have a chart here, a convenient graphic illustration that we made up. I know I cannot show that to the House as a prop. However, in those periods of time when there was no single desk, the price of wheat went down. In those periods of time when there was a single desk, the price of wheat went up. During the time when it was a voluntary dual marketing Wheat Board, the price of grains went down. The time when it was a single desk, the price of grains went up.

That is the accurate history of the experience of the Wheat Board from the 1920s. It is disingenuous to try to imply otherwise. Those are the kinds of facts that we could have benefited from in our deliberation of this bill. We are just trying to do our job here but those guys are so overwhelmed by their passion to destroy the Wheat Board, by their irrational hatred of the Wheat Board, that reason, logic, economics, science, due diligence, oversight and scrutiny are foreign concepts to the Conservatives. They rely on the anecdotal information of their personal experience.

I can sympathize with the parliamentary secretary. If he had some disagreement with the Wheat Board, maybe he should get involved in the Wheat Board elections and change the Wheat Board from within or allow a plebiscite vote, a fair question and a fairly conducted vote. If that vote were 50% plus 1 for abolishing the Wheat Board, members would not hear a word from us. There would not be this push-back because we would have consulted farmers, they would have spoken and their voices would have been heard and respected.

However, the government will not put it to a vote because, I believe, it is afraid of the outcome. Whenever we do consult farmers, it is split, admittedly, but the majority has ruled and that has been the magic of the Wheat Board. Its universality has been its greatest strength and its success.

Having a voluntary Wheat Board, we know from actual experience, is chimera. It is a myth. It is some notion that the government is trying to project on its way to the full abolition of the Wheat Board.

It is funny how the Americans recognize the advantage of having the Wheat Board. In fact, there is evidence of that. I try to back up my comments with actual documentation as opposed to the ideological notions, the whims, the flights of fancy of the minister and his parliamentary secretary. The Americans recognize that it is a huge advantage to Canadian farmers, so much so that they have filed 13 separate complaints to the GATT and the WTO claiming that the Wheat Board is such an advantage to prairie farmers that is constitutes an unfair trade practice and should be abolished as such. They lost 13 times because the WTO ruled that there was nothing unfair about producers acting collectively to get the best price for their product and to reduce their transportation costs and to share the risk by pooling the risk, sharing the profits and operating on a non-profit basis.

That might be contrary to the best interests of Cargill and the for-profit grain companies, but it is certainly not a violation of any kind of trade agreements that Canada has stipulated to. It is just good business sense. They realize that in unity there is strength, that collectively they could get the best prices and reduce their costs. One of the main complaints that the parliamentary secretary has is that they bought some ships. They bought some ships in order to provide the best possible transportation costs to their clients, the prairie producer. It is a non-profit operation.

I heard one of the members, I cannot remember his name, the long gun registry guy, calling it “lifting the iron curtain from grain marketing”, as if it were communism. Perhaps we have gotten to the root of the Conservatives' hatred here, their ideological zeal against the Wheat Board. They view it as communism for prairie farmers to act collectively in their own best interests. Therefore, they think it must be stamped out. That is how goofy it is. They are laughing about it now, but we know behind closed doors that is how they view it.

In fact, the experience has been one of the largest and most successful grain marketing companies in the world, the guarantor of the best premium quality grains in the world. The Wheat Board has given Canada a branding and reputation that add value to our product. I guarantee, and this is one of the things that I can also back up with documentation, we will lose that top quality branding if American grain companies start mixing Canadian product with batches of American product in their marketing operations. We will not have the oversight of the grain commission. We will not have the intensity of the research that comes from the grain institute, that complements the grain production, that gives the Wheat Board the number one premium brand in the world and our reputation.

The grain industry is vital to the area that I represent, the prairie region. Grain is our oil, the backbone of our economy. This is going to constitute a transfer of wealth, the likes of which we have not seen since the big pharma drug giveaway by the Liberal government when it gave 20-year patent guarantees to pharmaceutical companies.

This is a transfer of wealth of a magnitude that we have never seen on the Prairies. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be taken out of the pockets of prairie producers and will be put into the pockets of the shareholders of the big grain companies that have been salivating over this market share ever since the Wheat Board was created. They never gave up. Just like the enemies of public health care have never really given up, they have just been waiting in the wings for somebody to come along and finally do their dirty work for them so that they can get that market share back.

Just this weekend, I drove down Wellington Crescent, the richest street in Winnipeg, and was reflecting on this change that is going to take place. Every mansion on Wellington Crescent was built by the robber barons in the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s, who gouged prairie farmers so mercilessly that they were forced into some collective action to protect themselves.

Those robber barons put on a nice disguise now. Villainy wears many masks, but none so treacherous as the mask of virtue. We will hear virtuous statements from the agents of treachery in this debate. We will hear the parliamentary secretary. Let us guess what his next career will be. He will be a member of the board of directors of Cargill. He probably has job offers already with any kind of luck. If he is smart, he is negotiating that on the phone as we speak. “Guess what? The day has arrived. We finally stamped out the Wheat Board”. Villainy and treachery. J'accuse.

We already know the experience of Brian Mulroney. Where did he end up? On the board of directors of one of the big three. Guess what his billings were from 2009 to 2011. His billings as a director of Archer Daniels Midland were $650,000. Normally, a member of a board of directors is not compensated $650,000 just for attending one meeting a year to vote on the compensation of fellow directors. He is delivering something. He is delivering the Canadian Wheat Board back into the hands of the robber barons who have been drooling over this market share ever since this important change took place.

It is a sad day for democracy when such an important and transformative change to the rural prairie economy takes place without even the scrutiny, the oversight and the due diligence of Canadian members of Parliament.

This is the tragedy here. Perhaps we should be sounding the alarm.

I was accused of using an obscenity on Twitter recently, while I sat here lamenting closure. The real obscenity is the calculated abuse of Parliament, disrespect for Parliament and even disrespect for the courtesy of presenting a reasonable case. The real obscenity is not asking a single farmer, or ordinary producer, to come as a witness before a parliamentary committee to speak for or against a bill that would change things forever. And let us have no illusions about this, this change is irreversible. We will not get a Canadian wheat board back if we do not like, in the next five years, what is going to happen to this one. Some people will be happy about that; maybe those who are lucky enough to have a large acreage right on the American border and who could drive their product down to some mill in Montana.

However, let us deal with some of the myths that the parliamentary secretary and his minister, in some free market flight of fancy, are sharing. They say that as soon as they get rid of the Wheat Board, all kinds of value added and secondary industry will spring out of the ground like mushrooms all over the prairie region.

First, there is the untruth associated with this. In the last 10 years, milling capacity has increased 50% in the rural prairie region and four new institutions have popped up for value added. It is not as though it is impossible.

At the same time, south of the border, the milling capacity increased 9% and there were no new installations.

They would have us believe that it will be nirvana, that for a nominal fee they could reach nirvana tonight, that old myth. They are trying to promise all kinds of changes that would occur overnight because there is one guy who is waiting to open his doors as soon as they get rid of the Wheat Board. Do members know why? Because he would be able to buy grain cheaper. The Wheat Board did not offer a premium to producers, because their mandate was to get the best price for farmers. The only way to get grain cheaper is to give farmers less for it. Is that in the best interests of the prairie producers?

That is only one of the inconsistencies in their argument. If we were given the luxury of time at a parliamentary committee, we could study many others. I guarantee that their own members would have serious questions about why they are ramming through this ideological crusade in the absence of reason, logic, a business case, or even an economic case of why it might be a good idea.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the hon. member's speech. Before I get to my question, I would encourage the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and for the Canadian Wheat Board to consider playing the part of Tom Selleck in the next Magnum, P.I.. That is one heck of a moustache this Movember.

With regard to the member's comments regarding the Wheat Board, as I indicated earlier, I come from a farming background, in the great province of Ontario. We do not have a wheat board that ensures quality, but people line up to buy it because they know the quality of Ontario produce and grains and oilseeds is outstanding.

The member can talk of anecdotal evidence that he might have in support of the Wheat Board. It is not a market. Farmers there are not selling to the market. They are forced to provide their produce to the Wheat Board. They do not have an opportunity to go to the market with their grain. Nobody in any other part of the country, British Columbia, Ontario or Quebec, wants a wheat board. That is because they see the opportunity in the market.

Ontario, for example, has the second largest food processing industry in North America. I do not know if the member knows that. That is, in part, due to the fact that we have a free market in grains and oilseeds. Quaker Oats in Peterborough, for example, buys oats from local farmers. It has been a great partnership for the people of my riding.

I wonder why the member would close off opportunities to prairie farmers that farmers in Ontario, Quebec and elsewhere have.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a reasonable question. In fact, all we are asking for is that prairie farmers get the same courtesy and the same rights as Ontario farmers, in that we allow them to vote. When Ontario farmers chose not to use a single desk any more, it was the result of a democratic vote of all producers and by a small majority. They decided they did not want to use the single desk. Not a word was heard from us, not a word from the NDP, or CCF in those days. They made their choice democratically and we respected their choice.

The contradiction here is that the farmers in the western region, the Wheat Board region, were promised a vote and they have been denied that vote. We have no other avenue of recourse than to try to get our business case forward in Parliament.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government is about to tear away the sales and marketing department of 60,000 to 70,000 wheat farmers out west. The Wall Street Journal is heralding this legislation because it is going to mean profits for shareholders of Viterra and Cargill, profits from the pockets of farmers. The Alliance Grain Traders is opening up a pasta plant out west because, in its own words, it is going to pay farmers less for their grain. The Economist magazine has already talked about how the failure of small farms and small town economies out west will change the face of western culture. If we did not know any of these things, then we would think this was a good idea.

Would the member for Winnipeg Centre tell us about the raising of the cap from $60 million to $200 million just last week, which I think is to fund the folly of the Minister of Agriculture?