Evidence of meeting #3 for Bill C-18 (41st Parliament, 1st Session) in the 41st 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.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
You looked at the legislation and there's no provision to protect those two issues?
Former Director and Farmer, Canadian Wheat Board
The difficulty is that in order to protect it, you have to have a transparent mechanism for price discovery in port position and there's nothing in the legislation that provides that, among other pieces. Ultimately, the producer car shipper has a transaction that happens beyond the farm gate and they need a mechanism to establish value, and there's no price discovery in port at this time that's transparent.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Mr. Oberg, I'm going to give you the floor to respond to Mr. Hoback's comments and rant. Go ahead.
Chair, Canadian Wheat Board
Okay, thank you, Mr. Valeriote.
One of the issues you mentioned, Mr. Hoback, was durum, and I think by your comments you were suggesting that the Canadian Wheat Board is a deterrent to value-adding here in Canada. I'm here to tell you that certainly isn't true. To give you just a few numbers, western Canada has nearly 40% of Canadian durum capacity; North Dakota, just across the way, has 29% of U.S. durum milling capacity. If you look at the numbers on a per capita basis, they just don't add up. On a per capita basis there's more milling capacity, more malting capacity, here in Canada than there is in the U.S., which has never ever had a wheat board to my knowledge.
Chair, Canadian Wheat Board
Let me finish. Even if that were true—just assume for a minute that it were detrimental to establishing value-adding—the primary reason that maltsters and millers want producers out of the way is so they can access their raw product more cheaply.
Let me quote from the annual report of the Alliance Grain Traders, who just announced or passed a plan in Regina: “Margin erosion is combated by negotiating lower prices from growers....” That's from their own report.
I'll tell you that as a farmer, selling my grain for less to support value-adding doesn't make me very excited.
Conservative
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
All right.
Mr. Oberg, you commented about Mr. Ritz's promise that there would be a vote, that he would respect the opinion of farmers. You know a lot of farmers. In fact, you know a lot of farmers who voted Conservative. Can you tell me the number of farmers that voted Conservative who understood they would have an opportunity to vote under section 47.1 of the Wheat Board legislation?
Chair, Canadian Wheat Board
I don't have the exact numbers, but my constituents and Minister Ritz's constituents are in the same area. He was elected as a Conservative candidate. I was elected as a single desk director. Obviously, many farmers who voted Conservative also support the Canadian Wheat Board.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Thank you, Mr. Oberg.
Thank you, Mr. Valeriote. Your time has expired.
Now we move to Mr. Anderson for five minutes.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to be here tonight.
I should maybe lay this out again, because I'm not sure that the members who are here understand the importance of this, because they claim there are no studies backing up the advantages of single desk.
Last night we did hear that there are a number of studies that have been done, I think all of them pointing out the advantage. They include The Economics of Single Desk Selling of Western Canadian Grain, a 1996 study; A Bushel Half Full: Reforming the Canadian Wheat Board, by the C.D. Howe Institute in 2008; Pulling the Plug on Monopoly Power: Reform for the Canadian Wheat Board, also by the C.D. Howe Institute in 2011; Benefits and Costs of a Voluntary Wheat Board for the Province of Alberta, by the George Morris Centre in 2002; The Move to a Voluntary Canadian Wheat Board: What Should Be Expected?, by the George Morris Centre in 2011; and An Open Market for CWB Grain: A study to determine the implications of an open marketplace in western Canadian wheat, durum and barley for farmers, by Informa Economics in 2008. .
Actually, from the Informa study, I believe last night, we read into the record that there will between $400 million and $600 million advantage a year to farmers once this market is opened up.
I want to point out, Mr. Chair, that farmers spend their whole year working toward harvest. They spend their time planting. They spend their time contracting. They go out and seed and maintain their crop through the year. They bring it in just so that they can get that crop in the bin.
I noticed today that the PRO price of red spring 11.5 is $7.50. That's what Canadian farmers can expect on average in the year, if they deliver the grain. Last week in Montana the cash price was $11.50. So to say that we're getting some sort of an advantage from this single desk is misleading people.
The thing that really concerns me is how much money is being spent on this campaign, Mr. Chair. Today in one of the national newspapers that is hardly available in my riding, these gentlemen spent the equivalent of 8,500 bushels, at $7.50 a bushel, of somebody's grain, just by putting that ad in the paper.
I understand the over the time of their survey, when they were trying to get the answer they wanted to their survey, they put the equivalent of 40,000 bushels of farmers' grain down the drain in trying to get their own way.
My question to Mr. Oberg tonight would be, you've already admitting to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to get the answer you wanted on your phony survey. Could you tell me how much money you've committed to fight this bill? What's your budget?
November 2nd, 2011 / 6:50 p.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
To fight C-18, how much money are you spending? You said you're going to fight this to the end. Would you tell me how much money you and your other directors have budgeted?
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
It's farmers' money, but how much have you budgeted for this fight? Can you tell me that?
Chair, Canadian Wheat Board
To what part of the campaign specifically, or do you want them all?
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
The whole campaign. The whole fight on C-18. You've had a survey. You spent close to $400,000 that we know of. Could you explain in order to—
Conservative
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
I raised this yesterday. The witness has a fiduciary duty to protect the Wheat Board. He has to do everything within his power to keep the Wheat Board alive, and now he's being attacked for undertaking and doing the very things he's required to do by the legislation this government is now tearing apart.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Mr. Valeriote, that sounds like debate to me. If you have something further that would reference a standing order or something like that.
Mr. Oberg, I'm going to allow the question to stand.
Chair, Canadian Wheat Board
All right.
Well, first of all, I've always been of the view that the right—
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Can you give us a number and then explain it?
Chair, Canadian Wheat Board
I'll answer the question, thank you.
I've always been of the view that the right way to settle this issue was to let farmers decide, to have a fair plebiscite, as required by the current act under section 47.1. When the minister refused to do that, we thought it was incumbent upon ourselves to allow farmers to have a direct say in the future of their own organization, which they pay for.
We went ahead with that plebiscite. It's cost was $275,000, with some advertising costs on top of that.
Conservative