Mr. Speaker, on April 10 at 5.30 a.m., armed men surrounded and stormed the Manitoba farm home of the Desrochers.
One wonders, was the family harbouring foreign criminals, was it engaged in smuggling activities or was it in Canada illegally? No. Norman Desrocher had dared to do the unthinkable. He sold his barley to the Americans without obtaining permission from the granddaddy of the prairies, the Canadian Wheat Board. It took 14 state employees, one-third of them well armed, to seize a legally owned grain truck.
Compare this action to the border south of Ottawa where smuggling is a 24-hour a day business. Is this equality of the law? On the Dakota border a family is terrorized by government agents. On the New York border the government does nothing. When will this cowardly government begin to apply the law equally and fairly?