Evidence of meeting #25 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farmers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:45 p.m.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Can you commit today to a plebiscite on wheat, or is that far down the road?
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
I have no plans for a plebiscite on wheat at this time. Right now, on our timeline, we're looking at having the director elections this fall. We can't have a plebiscite at that time. It wouldn't be right to get into the middle of that. I do think the task force report is going to be debated. It will be debated right though the director elections. I'm sure it will be debated on into the spring as well. Hopefully in January we'll start the consultation process. Obviously it takes a period of time to do that properly and make sure that farmers can participate. It's a good time for them, I think. It's obviously not planting season. They're not harvesting. It's a good time to consult. We're going to have, no doubt, some ongoing debates on this. The consultation will be on barley in the new year. That's the only plebiscite I had planned.
4:45 p.m.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
I have one last question.
Minister, do you have any idea now who you will be consulting with to develop the question on the plebiscite?
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
Again, I'm all ears, so I'm sure I'm going to get lots of advice on this, as I get lots of advice on everything. This question's been up for consideration for many a year, especially on barley, so I think farmers, farm organizations, and others have thought this through. There's been a big debate, especially on barley, and it seems to me that I'm going to get lots of advice. Again, I'm eager to hear from all sorts of folks, especially from farmers.
I think I've had 4,500 letters on Wheat Board issues since I've been in office. They are almost equally divided, so I get lots of advice directly from farmers, which I think is always a little more candid on both sides than it is even from farm organizations.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
Thank you, Minister. Thanks for coming.
I don't have any wheat or barley in my riding in large amounts. I do have some. There's no marketing board, but there is a lot of supply management. Farmers in my riding are concerned because they're watching how you and your government are handling this very sensitive question.
I think it's a valid debate. I express no opinion on whether there should be single desk or whether there should be choice, although I do find it difficult to see how there can be a dual system with a marketing board that works. I haven't heard at this committee a lot of people come to the committee and testify that the dual system can work. There generally tends to be consensus that if you go to choice in marketing, the Wheat Board dies.
What I am concerned about, Minister, is the way you're going about this. You tell us today that you're going to have a plebiscite on barley and at one point you'll decide what the question is and at one point you'll announce who can vote. You've indicated that you're quite sure of how that vote will go, and I'm confident that you are, because otherwise I don't think you'd put the question. You are less confident on wheat.
Through the process of the election of the board members, playing with the list of voters, you've created a task force that was rigged, that would bring you the report that you wanted to see. You've announced a government appointee on that board, which is against the principles of the board that the member is there to champion. Rather than have an expert person in those five positions—that is the tradition—and that farmers be elected in the 10 spots elected directly by farmers, you've chosen to spell the doom.
You again bring it to this question, where you are dismantling the board, it seems to me, by numbers, by having the first plebiscite on barley alone and not on the question of single desk. Because the farmers in my riding know that your Prime Minister not very long ago said that he saw supply management as a government-sponsored price-fixing cartel, they are fearful that when there are some larger dairy or poultry producers who want to go it alone, who want to go out of the larger system of working together, they have a champion in the Prime Minister's Office and that this system will go.
What do you tell these people, Minister?
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
I'm glad you don't have wheat in your riding. You'd have really strong opinions on this.
I'll answer two or three things, since you raised them, and I'm happy to answer the supply management question as well. One is, of course, that the list I proposed for the voters list for the directors is entirely consistent with the Canadian Wheat Board's own recommendations from its own review panel last year. In fact, it's more generous than their own recommendations. It's a broader list. They said that a producer should have to deliver at least 40 tonnes of grain in order to be considered eligible for the director elections. I've just said any amount. If they've delivered grain in the last two years, they should be on the directors list. In fact, anybody who isn't on that automatically just has to sign a statutory declaration that they've been involved in the wheat industry somehow, that they're a feed dealer or whatever else, and they'll be added to the list. It's very easy to be added. But it's entirely consistent with the Wheat Board's own recommendations from its review panel from last year. So this is not draconian, this is consistent.
Also, the task force was tasked with coming up with a transition that would let the Wheat Board remain viable but that would transition to marketing choice. I think what farmers don't want is something where they have a Wheat Board one day and they don't have a Wheat Board after that.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
They're not dismantling anything. They've given advice to the government on how that transition might take place in an orderly way to ensure a strong Wheat Board. And whether you agree with this or not, it's much healthier to debate whether this task force recommendation is the way to go than it is to have one line in my campaign brochure and one line in your brochure, neither of which is really a plan at all, but is simply a line in a partisan document. So this at least allows for a healthy debate.
I should have mentioned one other thing. We did campaign front and centre on marketing choice for western Canadian farmers. We did promise changes to the support systems for farmers, which we're partway through and hope to complete this fall.
The third commitment was a commitment to supply management. We believe that the system has worked for Canada. We have supported it. I have supported it, and the Prime Minister has supported it, both on the stump during the campaign and ever since. I can tell you that he does it publicly and privately. I did it in Geneva, and I've done it on every possible occasion. We believe that a supply-managed system is here to stay, and we want to make sure it's a healthy and viable system, moving forward.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
I'm very pleased to hear that. That being said, with the failings of the WTO and the troubles at the WTO, are you prepared to use article XXVIII to support the limitation of milk fat imports into our country?
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Miller Conservative Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here.
I just have a comment for Mr. Thibault. He tried to insinuate, Mr. Minister, and you'll agree with what I'm going to say, I think, that the wheat selling mechanism through the Wheat Board is very split. It's divisive across the country. Whether it's 55-45 or 50-50 or whatever, it's very divisive, whereas it's 100% united in the supply-managed sectors.
You said that we support them. And I have to say I sold wheat six or seven years ago for the last time, and I was really hoping to be getting my ballot in the mail tomorrow. But I guess I'm not going to.
Mr. Minister, you spoke earlier about the benefits that the Wheat Board has declared they get back to farmers. I think it was around $550 million or something, whatever it was. As a wheat farmer, I take my wheat to the board. And from the time I take it until I actually get my last cheque for that wheat, it's about a year and half, give or take a few months. What I'd like to know is whether the interest lost to farmers is part of that equation, the loss of benefit or whatever, when they do that figure?
Do you understand where I'm coming from? I think I know the answer to it, but....
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
I'm not entirely sure, Mr. Miller, but I believe you're talking about the difference between what the Wheat Board pays on interest and what the Wheat Board borrows from the government.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gerry Ritz
If I could clarify that, Minister, I think what Mr. Miller is asking is this. I deliver my grain in August and I don't get my final payment until a year from January, so am I compensated for the loss of interest on that cashflow for that 18-month period under the Wheat Board?
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Chuck Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
No, I don't believe so.
One of the problems is, of course, especially in a rising market right now, for example, where people are saying, boy, Australia's drought problems bumped the price of wheat up in a single week by 10%. If I could dive into that market right now and take advantage of it as a wheat producer, I could get rid of my wheat. Some of that wheat is still hanging around from last year and they haven't got rid of it. So I could get rid of my wheat into a rising market, get my paycheque immediately, and start planning for next year.
The trouble is that you get initial payments, and by the time you get paid out, it's a long time from now. I just think it's one of the advantages of a marketing choice world. If you're one of those who don't want to pool risk and pool return, you can play the spot market, and in a situation like what happened a week ago, where the prices jumped 10% to 14% in a week, you say, right now, when the iron is hot, I'm going to take advantage of this. It's difficult to do that when you're pooling over a year.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Miller Conservative Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON
My point in bringing this question up was that if you're going to count the benefits, you have to count the negatives, and that definitely is a negative.