Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat reluctant to speak on this piece of legislation which has gone through committee and returned to the floor of the House. The reason I am reluctant is because we have been talking about participation in the process, as the hon. member from the governing benches indicated. Quite frankly, I am disappointed in the opportunity we were given to participate in the process.
I am sure most Canadians recognize that this is probably the most important piece of legislation which will affect the western Canadian producer in this session of Parliament.
The minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board had an opportunity to put forward legislation which in fact would take the producers of western Canada into the 21st century, taking into consideration the open global marketplace that we have today. He certainly had an opportunity to put into place legislation which would allow producers in western Canada to take full advantage of the produce they are producing currently at world prices.
The minister said that he was going to listen to all of those people who were prepared to appear before the committee. He wanted to hear their comments. He wanted to make sure their comments were embodied in this legislation. Quite frankly, the process that we went through in committee was, in my estimation, a railroad job.
The legislation was put through committee in record time. We were not allowed to listen to all of the opinions of all of the people who wanted to come forward.
I will give the House two examples. In committee I put forward an amendment to bring the minister back to the committee. The minister said, in his own words, that he wanted to come back to the committee after we had heard the witnesses to be able to hear what positions were being taken by those individuals. I asked the committee to extend the period of time that it was sitting to invite the minister back and I was turned down on that request. The minister I believe would have come back but the committee did not want to waste the time to hear all of those comments.
I also suggested that there is a parallel organization called the Ontario Wheat Board which has a fully elected board of directors, which has certain freedoms for its own producers that are not allowed in this particular piece of legislation. I would have liked to have heard from those individuals. The Liberal members of the government in committee would not allow us to subpoena or bring those people before the committee to hear how they operate.
As I said earlier, there was obviously an opportunity for the legislation to do what it should have done for the next numbers of years on behalf of our producers. I come from an area which is referred to as the wheat city. This legislation is very important. No one, I do not believe, really wanted to get rid of the Canadian Wheat Board. All we wanted to do in this legislation was to make sure that it is more competitive in today's market and today's world.
As for this preamble, this amendment that is before us, Motion No. 1, I cannot see why any member of this House, including the government, would not support it. As the parliamentary secretary indicated, the government wishes to have the producers in charge of their own marketing corporation.
All this preamble says is that the corporation will be working for the producers. Why not put that in the legislation so that it is there and people and the corporation recognize it is for the producers and not for the Government of Canada, not for the Minister of Agriculture, nor for the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board?
My party will be supporting Motion No. 1. In fact it is somewhat reminiscent of certain other motions that follow behind this. I know we will be dealing with them at another time in other areas.
I would also like to say that the government takes great pride in saying that this new legislation will make the Canadian Wheat Board accountable to producers, will make it transparent and certainly will make it accountable.
Quite frankly, the only way it will be accountable is if it has the full board of directors elected by the producers themselves and not have five of those directors appointed by the federal government.
There is another serious concern and that will be spoken to later in the amendments with respect to the appointment of the chief executive officer, the president. This will take many hours of debate to make sure that the government recognizes that an appointed CEO is just simply another arm of the federal government and not accountable to the producers themselves.
I am very pleased to be able to stand here and suggest that Motion No. 1 will be supported by my party when it comes to the vote and if indeed the Canadian Wheat Board is accountable to the producers, it should have that said specifically in the body of the legislation. I cannot see why government would not allow this to happen.