Mr. Speaker, I am quite a bit older than you are so you probably do not remember The Music Man . I remember in the musical The Music Man , the guy came into town and he was going to help the young people in that town. He quickly identified that one of the problems in that town was the pool hall. I remember the song went “We've got trouble right here in River City and it is because of pool, That starts with p and that rhymes with t and that spells trouble”.
Well, Mr. Speaker, we have trouble right here in River City, Ottawa, and the trouble is the power of the government to dictate what Canadians have to do. I would say it starts with power. It starts with p that rhymes with t and that spells trouble.
Let me enlarge on what I am saying here. Here we have western farmers who have not been given a choice to even express themselves. We had this phoney ballot over there in the west where instead of giving the farmers an opportunity to check on the ballot a choice which many of them would have chosen, namely a dual marketing system, that was refused to them by these bureaucrats and autocrats here in Ottawa. Shall I call them the dictators here in Ottawa because that is exactly what happened.
Instead, now the government is spinning this support for the wheat board as a continuation of the unaccountable, autocratic system that is there and that is not to the benefit of farmers.
We are talking here about group one, the first amendment, the amendment to put in a preamble. One of those Liberals over there said “Well, the preamble is meaningless”. I beg to differ. Whenever a court rules, part of its thinking is how to determine the intention of the legislators. If we declare what that intention is in the preamble it can have great weight in a court of law.
I would like to propose that the reason these Liberals do not want this particular amendment to pass and why they will autocratically with their party discipline overrule the common sense of a few of the Liberals over there who might vote for this is because its members must all vote together. It must force this.
Just as a little aside, something which annoys the dickens out of me is that here we are debating a very important issue and yet the decision on whether or not to vote for this amendment is going to be made by a person who, I venture to guess, will not have heard a word of this debate this afternoon. That is wrong.
We have lawyers, non-farmers and people from Ontario and the east who are not even covered by the wheat board. As a matter of fact, I am led to believe that the marketing system of grain in Ontario is by a fully elected board. If that is good enough for the farmers in Ontario why should we say to the farmers in western Canada “Oh, you don't know how to choose your own president of your board. We had better get the minister to appoint him”?
Do members know what I think? I think if the Liberals were to put a preamble here they would say whereas the Liberal government needs a place where it can appoint some of its friends and buddies and whereas the government needs a home for some of the failed Liberal candidates, therefore we should have a wheat board so that we have a place where we can appoint some of these guys.
Whereas we want to occasionally give these board members some money that is maybe higher than what the poor taxpaying blokes in Saskatchewan and Alberta and Manitoba can afford, they want to give these guys some of the big bucks and the big perks. Let's make sure the books stay closed. Let's make sure that the auditor general cannot touch it. Let's make sure that it is totally hidden and it is not accountable.
They would say whereas we want to do that for our buddies, let's make sure the farmers never find out. That is what their preamble would look like. No wonder they are against the preamble, because the preamble that is proposed by our member here is one that would hold them fully accountable. It is a preamble that would say the board exists for the farmers.
They keep saying this board is the best. Let the farmers choose.
I ask you this question, Mr. Speaker. I believe that you have had some business experience. I do not know whether you have had any farm experience, but I happen to have. I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan. It just so happens that the wheat board covers wheat and barley, but if the quality of that grain is down where it sells for feed, then it does not necessarily have to go through the wheat board. A farmer can purchase or sell the feed grains outside of the wheat board.
This is going to amaze you. It will astound you. The Liberals claim this wheat board is the best thing that ever happened to western farmers, and yet I know of farmers who have taken their high quality grain and voluntarily declared it to be feed quality, the very lowest quality, because selling it as feed they get more for it than if they sold it through the blinking wheat board.
If that wheat board is serving the farmers under conditions like that, then I have a bridge to sell you somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This is absolutely ridiculous.
The wheat board has to have a purpose for being. Why would there be any objection to having a preamble that says in simple terminology this is the purpose for this wheat board? Why should there be a wheat board without a stated purpose? That is really the debate here and I think the reason that the Liberals are opposed to this is they do not want the farmers to have it explicitly given. The Liberals do not want them to find out the truth about their purpose, motivation and the reason for the existence.
Instead, we need this preamble so that when the farmers of the prairies go to challenge the accountability of this wheat board in court, the judges can look at that preamble and say the purpose of this wheat board is to serve the farmers. The purpose of this wheat board is to maximize their profits, not sell their grain at beneath feed prices, but to get the maximum of profits.
The reason is that farming right now is very competitive. It is difficult to make a living on the farm these days, and I know of what I speak. My brother farms on land which I worked on when I was a kid. He and his boys are farming way more land and they are getting about three or four times the production per acre that we did when I was a youngster. My brother is having a harder time making ends meet than my dad ever did. Why is that with three or four times the rate of production? It is because the farmers do not have the freedom to take what is rightfully their own and sell it where they want to sell it.
If the wheat board is doing its job, the wheat board will get the business. There is no doubt about it. If I am a farmer and I have some grain to sell, I am going to look at the different places where I can sell it. If I get $2 a bushel here and $3 here and $4 here, unless there are some very strange extenuating circumstances, I will pick the one that gives me the best price, the $4 per bushel.
Let us say that there is a case where the farmer is offered by the wheat board maybe $2 a bushel with the hope of a future payment to make up the difference. That is how it works. Let us say that farmer sees another place where he can get maybe $5 a bushel right now, cash.
I challenge the Liberals. There are two or three of them over there who can think for themselves. Will they have the courage to vote against their party and vote for common sense and say yes, if the farmer wants to have the right to sell his grain outside the wheat board he should have the right to do that?
That happens to be in my view almost a human right. Whose grain is it? Who seeded it? Who prepared the soil? Who paid the taxes? Who paid for the fuel? Who paid for the fertilizer? Who paid for the tractors and the machinery? Who worked 18 hours a day? Who prayed for rain? Who prayed for the locusts to go away? If we can get rid of the Liberals and the locusts, the farmers will have it made.
Let me be serious here at the end of my time. I really want to appeal very seriously to the members over there. The people who are making the decision on whether to vote for this are not hearing these arguments. May they please use their heads. May they please be independent in their thinking and vote for what is right.